Addison Timlin

Addison Timlin Instagram – I’ve gotten a beautiful gift the last couple years- women I love becoming mothers. Watching their shoulders drop, their face change and their breathe soften. I have been waiting for them. Waiting for them to join me in this gentle, achey lovingness. To nod my head when they say “what was I even doing before this?”
Mothering remains as joyful and as painful as it always has. Spending my most poignant moments staring at them in the rearview mirror. The risk of missing the turn eclipsed by the risk of missing the way their eyes change on the way to school and on the way home. Watching them stare out the window, their thoughts and dreams that I wish to peer inside of, whispering lyrics to Avril Lavigne songs. My life a merry go round of “how was your day?” Seeing my baby tuck away her pacifier before preschool, my toothless child begging to transition out of her car seat- all while wishing for my own safety harness to grow into. A kaleidoscope of the way things change- no longer jolted awake by a crying baby at 3 am, but the gentle shake of a 6 year old with big worries. Her little body curled up against mine, just like how it all started. A new kind of bad sleep softened by the breathing in of her exhaled dreams.
I have learned that the feelings and the bodies do not grow to scale, the feelings will always outmatch us. My container for them will splinter but we are not made of glass. As mothers we can hold their feelings, we can also connect to them, even when it hurts. Even when your child looks you dead in the face and says they’d be happier somewhere else.
“Tell me about that happiness”
I’ll never forget the way her face changed, and how in that moment my life did too. Mothering is a practice of witnessing all the changes, in our faces and eyes and in our hearts. The permission to design a life of their wildest dreams, their happiness on their own terms. May that happiness be a place I can visit, maybe even one day to find their face changed asking me “what was I even doing before this?” So much. So much. | Posted on 12/May/2025 02:14:50