The amazing Eleanor Taylor, currently 10 weeks pregnant, and mother to Alexandra (17 months).
Eleanor says that while she has no idea what she is doing much of the time she loves her daughter like crazy. Eleanor is adopted and while she was pregnant with Alex she was really looking forward to meeting her. Her baby would be the first person she would ever meet who was her blood relation and she thought it would be an amazing moment. She imagined the heavens opening, doves flyings, angels singing down on them but when her daughter was born. When it happened, however, Eleanor realized that the love she felt was no different from the love she had felt for and from her family her whole life. Eleanor was nervous to leave the hospital with this new human in her care but kept coming back to the idea of love. If she just provided endless amounts of love, support, security, and warmth the the rest would follow and Eleanor says that it has. "Family for me has nothing to do with blood and everything to do with love. Becoming a mother solidifies how true that rings for our family."
"I just wanted to come to encourage women to tell their story. Motherhood can be isolating and lonely at times. It can be frustrating, scary, wonderful, joyous, tearful, amazing, tiring, endless, and overwhelming. But it is single handedly my greatest accomplishment, and I think if more women were to share how tough and beautiful all aspects of motherhood is including the bodies that got us there, we could all accept each other a little more. Encourage each other a little more, and criticize people's parenting choices, bodies, or life styles a little less. Motherhood no matter how you got there, vaginal, c-section, adoption, fostering, IVF, surrogacy... it's all the same beautiful, powerful, terrifying road. I hope we can all celebrate that."