There are some drives that are more than just getting from one place to another. Some roads carry memories in the pavement. Yesterday, without realizing it, I took one of those drives. I don’t believe in coincidences. I never have. I think things show up when we need them, even if we don’t understand why at first. Yesterday I had to take my fur-baby to the vet because he’s been limping again. The same vet who did his surgeries years ago. I had never been to this office which meant an hour drive each way, so I plugged the address into my navigation app and off we went. What I didn’t expect was that the route would take me straight through pieces of my life I haven’t visited in years. Past the community college where I earned summer credits. Past the church where I got married. Past the YMCA where I took swimming lessons as a little girl. Road after road that I hadn’t driven in forever somehow came back like muscle memory. Every turn familiar. Every landmark holding a story. And honestly? It was exactly what my heart needed. At the vet, we waited for what felt like forever. Once everything was cleared and I was told it was age and arthritis….just like his momma….the vet and I were talking afterward, I could feel myself sitting right on the edge of tears the entire time. I told him I know my dog is getting older. I know that day will come someday. But not now. Please not now. And then I cried. I told him how I recently lost both my parents and how strangely cathartic this drive had been for me. He asked where I grew up and I told him. Turns out he lives in that same small town now. Ten years. I’ve been going to this vet for over ten years and I’m just finding this out now? Such a small world. As I left, my GPS routed me home a different way and about a block from the vet was the marine store where my family spent so much time when I was growing up. Boats. Water skis. Snow skis. Equipment lined up everywhere. So many Saturdays with my dad walking through those aisles. So many summers built around the water. So many winters built around the snow. And in that moment I wanted so badly to tell someone those stories. To laugh about them with someone who remembered. But the people who shared those memories with me are gone from my life now. Those memories belong only to me. That realization is both beautiful and heartbreaking. As I drove, Grateful Dead playing through my speakers, I found myself smiling at every little thing I remembered. Each memory healing something in me. Tiny stitches closing up parts of a broken heart. It’s funny how grief works. When your parents die, the good and the bad goes with them. They are the only people who really knew you from day one. The only people who knew every version of you. Every phase. Every family story. Every triumph and heartbreak and embarrassing moment and inside joke. And then suddenly that connection is gone. And sometimes when parents go, the connection to siblings and extended family changes too. The glue that held everyone together is gone. The person who softened tensions, organized holidays, insisted people stay connected, covered the cracks… they’re no longer here. That grief is its own kind of loss too. The grieving of it all is layered. But like I said, I don’t believe in coincidences. I think those roads found me yesterday for a reason. I think my soul needed familiar places. Familiar turns. Familiar memories. I needed to remember that even though the people are gone, the stories are still here. The memories are still alive inside me. I carry the family lore now. I carry the history. I carry them. And somehow that feels both unbearably heavy and completely priceless at the same time.
I recently found a necklace after my mom passed. I was drawn to its simplicity and felt comfort in wearing it, though I could not explain why it felt different or where it even came from. I put it on and have not taken it off since. Lately, I catch myself reaching for it when I am anxious, twisting it between my fingers without even thinking, and I did not really understand why. Today, on Mother’s Day, I was looking through old photos and found one of my mom and me on my First Communion day. And there it was. The necklace. I do not remember the necklace at all, but I remember the dress vividly because my mom made it for me. I remember how proud I was to wear something she created with her own hands. Proud that my mom made it just for me. Funny that I found that photo today. Mother’s Day. Mother’s Day has never been an easy day for me. Not as a daughter. Not as a mother. And now, especially not without my mom here. I think there is this expectation that Mother’s Day is supposed to feel soft and warm and easy. Beautiful cards. Perfect brunches. Matching smiles in photos. Everyone calling their mom their “best friend.” And if that is your story, I genuinely love that for you. But it has never quite been mine. I did not have the quintessential mother-daughter relationship. My relationship with my mom was complicated. Layered. Heavy at times. Beautiful at times too. I loved my mother deeply. Fiercely. I admired her more than I can even explain. She was brilliant, accomplished, talented, respected, and capable of making absolutely anything feel elegant and intentional. She taught me to notice beauty. To appreciate history. To understand that there is value in tradition, in details, in doing things well. But being her daughter was not easy. Her expectations were always high. Sometimes impossibly high. It took me years to understand that no matter what I achieved, accomplished, fixed, managed, or became, I would never fully make her happy in the way I desperately wanted to. That realization is painful to admit out loud because I know she loved me. She did. Absolutely. But love is complicated sometimes. People love from the places they know, and sometimes the way someone loves you is not the way you need to receive love. That has been one of the hardest lessons of my life. Still, she shaped me into the woman I am today. Both because of her love and in spite of it. Because of her expectations and despite the weight of them. I carry so much of her in me. The good. The hard. The beautiful. The impossible. Mother’s Day itself was never really about me. It was about honoring the mothers and women in the family first and foremost. The expectation of making the day special was always there. The planning. The pressure. The responsibility of making everyone feel celebrated and cared for. It was never about me. Ever. And honestly? I know how heavy that can feel. Thus I never want my own children to carry that kind of emotional obligation for me. I do not want them to feel responsible for my happiness. It took me years of therapy to figure out that I am responsible for my own happiness. I do not want my kids to spend their lives trying to earn love or approval or peace from me. That cycle ends here if I can help it. And the truth is, I have not been a perfect mother. Not even close. There are moments I wish I could redo. Seasons I wish I had handled differently. Choices I made from fear, overwhelm, anger, survival mode, trauma, exhaustion. None of those are excuses. They are simply truths. I have apologized to my children, and I will continue to apologize when I get it wrong because I think mothers should. I think accountability matters. I have always done the best I could with who I was at the time. And sometimes that version of me was struggling more than anyone realized. The reality is that each of my children got a different version of me as their mother because I was a different person while raising each one of them. Youthful. Older. Wiser. More wounded. More healed. More patient. Less patient. More financially secure. More emotionally exhausted. Every child enters a different chapter of our lives, and motherhood evolves whether we want it to or not. That does not mean the love was different. It means I was. And maybe that is the part nobody talks about enough. Mothers are not perfect humans. They are simply human beings trying to carry the enormous responsibility of loving and shaping other human beings while often still healing themselves. We are flawed and fabulous all wrapped into one complicated package. So today, Mother’s Day holds all of it for me at once. Love. Grief. Joy. Sadness. Gratitude. Regret. Admiration. Anger. Compassion. Longing. And maybe that is okay. Maybe motherhood was never meant to fit neatly into greeting cards and social media captions. Maybe the most honest thing we can do is tell the truth about it.
There is a stage of life that no one really prepares you for, and lately I have realized that I am standing right in the middle of it. We spend so much of our lives planning the obvious milestones. College. Careers. Marriage. Babies. Houses. Retirement accounts. The whole thing gets mapped out like a timeline we are supposed to follow. There are books, podcasts, experts, and entire industries devoted to helping people navigate those stages. But this stage? The one where the roles that once defined your life quietly shift or even disappear? That part seems to get skipped entirely. And yet here I am. For years I was the director of my children’s lives. I scheduled things, organized things, advised on things, and occasionally insisted on things. Now I have moved into a role that no one warned me about: audience member. I am in the stands cheering them on as they build their own lives, trying very hard not to yell unsolicited advice from the sidelines like a slightly overenthusiastic sports/stage mom clapping as loud as I possibly can at every chance I get. It is a beautiful transition, but it is still a transition. At the same time, another role in my life quietly ended. For the past few years I was a caretaker for my parents, and when they passed away that responsibility ended in a way that left a space I had never really anticipated. When you have been responsible for others for so long, it is a strange realization to wake up one day and understand that the person you are now responsible for caring for is… you. Caretaker of myself. That is a role I never really planned for, and it turns out there is no instruction manual for it. No one sits you down and says, “Here’s what happens when your children are grown, your parents are gone, and you suddenly have to figure out who you are outside of the roles that filled your life for decades.” Maybe that is why this season feels a little unsteady. Not wrong. Not sad or happy all the time. Just unfamiliar. Although, to be fair, the unsteady feeling could also be my joints reminding me that I am sixty. It is hard to say which is which some days. Sixty is an interesting number because it sounds enormous when you say it out loud, yet somehow my brain did not get the memo. In my head I feel much younger than that. My body occasionally disagrees, but overall it is still cooperating well enough. There are a few more aches than there used to be, but nothing a little stretching, movement, and mild denial cannot handle. And despite the uncertainty, life actually feels pretty full. I pay my own bills. I make my own decisions. If I want cheese and crackers for dinner, I have cheese and crackers for dinner and no one questions my life choices. If I want to stay up late reading, writing, or going down a rabbit hole of ideas for something new I want to build, I do that too. Some nights the house is quiet and peaceful, and other nights I am talking to the dog like he is a full participant in the conversation, which, based on the look he gives me, he clearly believes he is helping with the decision making process. There is a certain freedom that comes with running your own life. I decide how I spend my time. I decide where my energy goes. If I want to sign up for something new, start a project, change direction, or sit with a cup of coffee and think about life for an hour, I can. There is no committee meeting required to approve the plan. There is also something deeply satisfying about realizing that the life around me is one I built myself over time, piece by piece. And yes, I still sleep diagonally across the bed when I feel like it… unless the dog has claimed most of the mattress, which happens more often than I care to admit. People sometimes assume that at this stage a woman must be looking for a partner, as though being single automatically means something is missing. As if there is a box on the life checklist that still needs to be filled in. But the truth is that I am perfectly content with my life as it is. I have built a life that feels full, meaningful, and mine. If a partner ever enters the picture, they will need to be a one hundred percent value add to my life. Not a fixer-upper project. Not someone who needs to be managed, motivated, or mothered. I am long past the stage of my life where I am interested in taking on another full-time emotional renovation project. At this point, anyone who joins my life should arrive with their own life already intact. Someone who brings joy, laughter, and partnership to the table. Someone who makes the good parts of life even better, not someone who complicates the peace I have worked hard to create. Otherwise, I am quite happy running my own life, making my own decisions, and yes… sleeping diagonally across the bed. What I do find myself wondering about, though, is how many other women are standing in this same space. How many of us are just a bit past the midpoint of life and realizing that there is still so much living left to do, while also recognizing that the structure of our lives has shifted in ways we never really planned for? We are no longer raising small children. Many of us are navigating the loss of parents or other loved ones. The roles that once defined us are evolving, and we are discovering who we are when we are no longer primarily responsible for everyone else. The loss of my parents is still very raw, and grief has a way of rearranging the furniture in your life whether you are ready for it or not. Some days I feel strong and clear about what comes next, and other days I feel like I am simply doing my best to put one thoughtful foot in front of the other. But somewhere inside all of that is the quiet understanding that this is now my time to discover what my life looks like in this new space. It is a space that many women never really get the chance to explore. Sometimes that is because they have a partner whose life direction becomes intertwined with their own. Sometimes it is because life moves so quickly that there is never time to stop and ask, What do I want now? And sometimes, if we are honest, it is simply fear. Fear of stepping outside the roles we have known for decades. Fear of the unknown. Fear of standing in a place where there is no clear guidebook. Because there really isn’t one. This era of life does not come with instructions. There is no neatly packaged plan for what to do when your children are grown, your parents are gone, and you suddenly realize that the next chapter of your life is largely yours to design. That realization is both terrifying and incredibly liberating. So for now, I am doing what I have always done when life feels uncertain. I am moving forward, learning as I go, and paying attention to what feels meaningful. I am allowing myself the space to grieve, the space to grow, and the space to imagine what this next era might hold. And I suspect I am not the only woman standing in this place. Which is why I find myself thinking more and more about community. About women walking alongside one another through this stage of life instead of quietly trying to figure it all out alone. Women who are still very much in their prime, still curious, still capable, still full of life, but also honest about the fact that this chapter comes with questions. Maybe together we can help create the path that none of us were given. We can support one another as we figure out what this next era looks like, share what we are learning along the way, and build something that not only helps us move forward but also creates space for the women who will come after us. Because while there may not be a guidebook for this part of life, there is something powerful about realizing that we have the ability to write it ourselves. And for now, I will keep doing the one thing I know how to do. Moving forward. Because forward is a pace.
When I was little, I didn’t dream about a wedding. I didn’t plan out my future husband’s name or picture a white dress. While other girls were playing “bride,” I was cradling my dolls, changing their tiny outfits, and rocking them to sleep. I wasn’t playing house—I was playing mom. Motherhood was always the dream. As I got older, that didn’t change. I loved babies, and I mothered any child I could. My nephews and niece? I doted on them, cared for them, and soaked up every moment. Holding them, feeding them, soothing them—it felt natural. Right. Like I had stepped into a role that had always been meant for me. Marriage, on the other hand? That was never part of the picture. It wasn’t that I was against it, but it simply wasn’t what I longed for. Some people dream of love stories, wedding bells, and the perfect partner. I dreamed of cradling a baby in my arms, of hearing the word “Mom” spoken with love and trust. But life has a way of surprising us. I did get married. I prayed for the white-picket-fence life—the partnership, the shared responsibilities, the happily ever after. But that’s not what I got. Instead, I got another child and most of the housework. I became a mother in every sense of the word, to my children and, in many ways, to my husband too. The marriage I envisioned—the one filled with teamwork and equal weight—never quite materialized. And maybe that’s because I was never meant to be a wife. But even as a mother—the one role I always knew I was meant for—I haven’t been perfect. I haven’t always been the mom I imagined myself being. I have made mistakes, ones that weigh heavy on my heart. There are moments I wish I could go back and change, things I would have done differently if I had known then what I know now. Hindsight is always 20/20. I know mistakes were made, but I’ve also learned from them. Instead of letting them define me, I’ve chosen to forgive myself and do better. To be better. Motherhood isn’t about perfection—it’s about growth, love, and showing up, even when you don’t get it right. Is there psychology behind all of this? Maybe. Maybe it was the desire to love and be loved unconditionally. Maybe it was the innate pull to nurture, to protect, to guide. Or maybe—just maybe—I was simply born to be a mom. And I truly believe that’s enough. Some people are meant to be partners first. Others are meant to chase careers, passions, or adventures. Me? I was meant to be a mom. That was always my purpose, my calling, my heart’s greatest wish. Peace, #tutulady #forwardisapace
This morning, I woke up in my happy place. Yet, something felt different. As I sipped my coffee, gazing at the water and listening to the birds, it struck me: today is Independence Day, a day we celebrate freedom. But today, it wasn’t just about national freedom; it was about my personal freedom. For the first time in what feels like forever, I am at peace. For over half my life, I lived in fear, always bracing for the next shoe to drop, tirelessly trying to maintain peace around me. The anxiety of keeping everything and everyone in balance was a heavy burden. But now, that chapter is closed. The peace I feel now is so profound, so tangible, that it’s almost overwhelming. To anyone who has spent years wondering when the turmoil will end, take heart: it does end. There is peace after the storm. When you finally reach that moment when the world allows you to truly exhale for what feels like the first time in your adult life, it’s like a weight is lifted. The constant feeling of impending doom dissipates, and what remains is pure, unadulterated peace. Even though our country may feel scary and uncertain right now, peace is still possible. The hope for that peace is what drives us forward. Our nation’s current challenges can make it hard to believe in a peaceful future, but it’s crucial to hold onto that hope. It is hope that sustains us, fuels our resilience, and lights the way to a brighter, more peaceful tomorrow. I share my journey, the good, bad and inbetween to give others hope. Hope that things do get better. Hope that there is a way forward. Hope that a future filled with peace is possible. On this Independence Day, I celebrate not just the freedom of our nation, but the profound personal freedom that has finally brought me real peace. Peace is out there, waiting for you. Keep moving forward, and I promise that you will find it.
Kristine Binder 