I flailed in the early years, anxiety swallowing all my joy. I wanted so desperately to be good at this, this motherhood thing, and I couldn’t find any evidence that I was.

Anytime I meet someone new, especially in groups, I can immediately tell you all the ways we are different. All the ways I don’t fit in. All the reasons they probably won’t include me.

They say if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can move a mountain. But they don’t say what to do when your faith that was the size of a mountain has turned into a mustard seed.

Something terrible happened, something unimaginable -- and in the morning, someone showed up. With a cup of coffee. Coffee that promised me: it’s going to be okay.

It made me think about how I wish I was already at that place where I can remember some of the good stuff without triggering all the grief. And then I made broccoli tonight and Mila gave it a shot.

But once the invisible clock hands slide past halfway, real-life Ali stages a hostile takeover of vacation Ali, and I start worrying about all the things we still need to do, all the things we might miss, how little time left there is to relax.

It’s this space in the middle that’s hard for me. This weird, undefinable moment in time where you know things will never be like they were before, but you also aren’t sure what they will be like ahead.

Family is two kids who got into a shoving match during this photo shoot that ended in mom yelling and tears flowing. I was embarrassed, but the photographer brushed it off.

Love is doing whatever it takes to be the best version of yourself for the people who love you, even if that means asking your doctor for anxiety meds through shame-filled tears, desperately trying to convince her it’s only temporary and you’re really not usually like this.

Sometimes, my grandmother would slice a banana into rounds in a bowl and pour half-and-half over them, telling us this was a treat my father enjoyed as a boy. I loved to imagine him sitting at the same table, and I loved my grandmother’s cutlery — the delicate flowers and ribbons and bows, how light they were in my hands.

I don’t feel like I was only one who felt the extra energy, whether it was from someone loved and lost, or maybe just memories of who we were and who we’d wanted to be, lingering thoughts of a different time, or hope for a time when things are better— there is joy and grief in remembering, in believing.

Marriage is partly hard because you know all these things about one another — all the insecurities, the vulnerabilities, the tender spots. You know where to aim when you’re angry, when your not-best-self thinks hurting someone else will make you feel better.

And she does this thing lately where she punctuates the end of every statement with, “Mom, right?” Right? It comes out high and lilted, leaving a question mark dangling in the air. And it’s so much more than a question about accuracy.

And I have these moments where I desperately want to just reach out my finger and push the power button — hold it steady until everything goes black. Turn it all off, power it all down.

The truth is, it never gets easier. Spending so much time and effort slowly building a life only to tear it all down again a few years later. Carefully crafting friendships, exposing vulnerabilities, risking rejection -- it's a delicate dance starting from scratch while desperately trying to make it all feel like a continuation.

I don't think he remembers feeling lonely or unloved, or bored or maybe sometimes hungry. But the scars are still there, carried in his little soul across the water, crashing like waves into our lives.

Before he was ours, a year felt like a long time, like for sure we'd have it all figured out by the time he'd been home an entire year. Now, it feels like an instant.

Tonight he said, "Mom, I can see my own self in your eyes." Oh buddy, I hope so, because it's beautiful.

Christmas is about -- making mistakes and accepting forgiveness, seeing beauty in the things you already have, sacrificing yourself for the joy of others, and most importantly, Christmas is, and has always been, about people.

She just loves that I love her -- and sometimes, when I'm caught off-guard by that spectacular truth, it stuns me.