My Reasons

I fell in love with music at the age of seven and I thought at the time that it would be the greatest love of my lifetime. And then I became a mother. The minute I held my first born son, Adam, I felt a new, indescribable love and that new experience changed my relationship with music...I could feel music even more deeply and I had so much more to say when it came to writing my own music.

After Adam came 6 more beautiful children - Josh, Jordan, Nicholas, Kaelan, Kiara & Madison, spanning 13 years between them. I was pregnant and/or nursing for almost 15 straight years. Total madness. But I was madly in love with having these littles all around me. I loved the noise, the chaos, the constant commotion. I loved watching them relate to each other, play make believe together...discover themselves in the mirror of the other. Even the fighting made me smile - not always but sometimes. There were definitely times where I lost it having reached my boiling point and just like a steam kettle, I would howl. Which of course, made them, only laugh. Very rarely was I actually scary enough to get the change in behaviour I was after.

Being a mother soon became my reason. My reason for almost all the choices in my life revolved around my role as a mother. The reason I went to work every day. The reason I paused my music career. The reason I felt joy in any given day. The reason I laughed. Or saw the magic in the world.

But now, as they have become young adults, they are my reasons in a different way.

Their love for me laid the foundation for learning to love myself...after a long battle with co-dependency, self-doubt, imposter syndrome, you name it. Finally, after so many decades running from me, I know me. Through their eyes, I was able to start seeing myself because of how they see me. And with all the good, the bad and the ugly, they never waiver in their love for me. Even when I fail as a human being. When I fail to be a mother. There is still a feeling of constant...an ever presence inside the very word "mother" when they speak it. There is an inherit acceptance. And through that, I had no choice but to start accepting myself. They are the reason I learned to believe that I matter. That I now believe I am lovable.

They are my reasons. And they led me home.