My husband called me earlier today and when I realized it was him, I wanted to cry. There are not words to accurately described how stressed out I get from work, so instead, I am taking a minute to breathe.

And be like Zoot. And Swistle.

A year ago I was 21 weeks pregnant. We were beginning the worst heat wave Huntsville had seen in 50 years (almost a month straight of triple digit temperatures). I had been married almost a year, and we finally learned that Lil Peep was hung with a massively large penis.

Today, I am a working mom. I am a stepmother. I am in a new job that I am so incredibly proud of and so incredibly stressed about. I have mommy guilt every. single. day. about my “choice” to work. I love my job. I am so incredibly blessed to be in the marriage I’m in. I’m exhausted. I love my child in a way I never imagined I could love anything. I am in a job I’m in no way qualified for. I am pretty damn good at it, regardless. I have a family that makes me so incredibly lucky. My life is constant, fluid, and unexpected. I am overwhelmed constantly. I would have it no other way.

A year from now, we will have launched our first vehicle. It is instinctive to say that my child will be walking, but in reality, all I can say definitively is “We will have addressed my child’s foot deformity and how it affects his mobility.” Which is akin to saying, “A year from now.. I will have laid my heart out, bare on the doctor’s table, and we are stronger from it. All of us.”

I want so badly to say that a year from now, I will be skinny/will have perfect hair/will have planted our yard/etc, but all I can think about in a year from now is my child, and what obstacles he’ll.. we’ll.. have overcome.