We are kicking off a three part series to celebrate motherhood and share our team members' journeys to becoming moms. Join us as we share some of our most tender and precious moments, that we might all come out of this week with a new perspective on motherhood, sisterhood and the power of storytelling.

Kristen Fields, Director of Social Media and Digital Marketing with her new baby girl, Revelry

Mother’s Day is more than a day celebrating the women who wipe snotty noses and chauffeur kids around to their many activities. It is a day that sparks the full spectrum of emotions: joy for a new mother, pain for a grieving child, frustration for a couple trying, fear for single women, and grief for mothers who have lost children. It is a day to celebrate and honor the heartbreak, the sacrifice, and the pain that is associated with motherhood, to uplift those women who were, are, and will be mothers and to meet them in whatever season they are living in with grace.

I didn’t realize the truth of all this until last Mother’s Day. Sitting in a church pew surrounded by mothers being recognized on their special day I sat, with tears behind my eyes, reflecting on the months of negative pregnancy tests and disappointing doctor’s appointments, and wondering when/if I would get to join these (what I perceived to be) moms who had it all so easy.

Shortly after my husband and I decided to start trying for a baby, I experienced some issues that landed me in a doctor’s office where I had to face the kind of diagnosis you don’t want to receive when you’re trying to get pregnant: PCOS, a hormonal disorder that affects fertility and makes it difficult to conceive. Disappointed, ashamed, fearful and a little bitter, I wrestled with this obstacle: experiencing a little cycle of grief every month (mustering up whatever amount of hope and determination I could find after every failed attempt that resulted in raw disappointment and bouts of depression). While it seemed like everyone else’s lives were moving forward, mine was stuck in this monthly limbo, hoping and waiting for a baby that I wasn’t sure I’d receive anytime soon.

A poem I wrote in the raw moments of a negative pregnancy test that I shared with a community of women artists struggling with infertility, Art of Infertility.

As women, we often suffer silently. We internalize our fears and disguise our struggles. We grin and bear it for the sake of others, but we rob each other of the solidarity our vulnerability with one another can bring us. The moment I started to open up about my journey to motherhood to others, I found a community of women who, despite how it looked to an outsider, were in the trenches of this same journey with me. That femme-fraternity is what helped me regain strength and perspective for my own fight.

On April 4, the sweet victory we’d been praying for finally arrived.

The journey to Revelry was paved with some of the hardest and sweetest moments of my life. Our prayer for her is to cling to all that is good in this world, to learn to adore and celebrate all of life’s moments, and ultimately revel in ‘the journey.’ I am forever grateful for the seasons that brought me to her, the lessons I learned and the battles we fought. I am deeply humbled to celebrate this Mother’s Day with a new perspective and among the many mothers I admire and who rallied around me.

Motherhood is all of the sacrifices and battles we fight to become mothers. It’s a community of warrior women who will do anything for their family: offering up their own bodies, plans, and livelihood to mother their children. Every mother has battle scars and every woman has a story. Let Mother’s Day be a celebration of all of our stories’ victories, an anthem to join those women fighting in the trenches, and an opportunity to lift one another up after our losses as we march forward, together, as the warrior moms that we are.

Check out these other personal stories from young mothers on our team:

One Mother's Story: Worth the Wait by Founder Katie Norris
One Mother's Story: A Worthy Journey by our Director of Public Relations Jodi Phillip