For years, I have been the mom who handles everything.
The school runs, the homework, the dinners, the bills, the logistics, the emotional load of keeping everyone afloat. I am working full-time. I am in graduate school. I am raising two kids on my own.
And somewhere in the middle of all of that - I disappeared.
Not all at once. Gradually. Quietly. One small erosion at a time.
I stopped doing the things that made me feel like me. I stopped prioritizing my health because there was no time, no energy, no one to hand anything to. I told myself I'd get to it later. That this was just what moms do. That it was temporary.
But later never came on its own.
I've been a single mom for seven years. I've battled depression. I've gone through the weight loss and gain cycle more times than I want to count. I was diagnosed with a chronic neurological condition - Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension - that changed the way I could approach fitness entirely and forced me to rebuild my approach to health from the ground up.
I'm also in my early forties, working toward my Master's in Public Health, running a business, and raising a nine-year-old competitive gymnast and a four-year-old who keeps me on my toes.
I'm not telling you this because I want sympathy.
I'm telling you this because I know exactly where you are. I know what it feels like to be running completely on empty with no one coming to save you. And I know what it feels like to finally decide - I am going to choose ME.
That decision didn't happen overnight. It wasn't dramatic. It started small. One walk. One workout. One choice to show up for myself the way I'd always shown up for everyone else.
And it changed everything. Not just my body — how I feel, how I think, how I show up for my kids. When I finally started taking care of myself, I became a better mom. Not because I had more time. Because I had more me.
That's why MomStrong exists.
Not because I arrived somewhere. Because I'm still on the journey — and I know the way.