One of my favorite parenting articles of all time is Glennon' Doyle's Don't Carpe Diem. 

She rejects the idea of "enjoy EVERY moment with your kids!" (because that's close to impossible) and gives us another approach: acknowledge that a lot of parenting is HARD but that there are some truly incredible moments. 
​
Those times when time stops and you are just in AWE of your children, your life, or just in a moment of pure joy. ​

People often talk about motherhood as a before and after. What we were like before the baby and then who we became after, as if in an instant we changed on a molecular level. I’ve heard some people describe it this way, but I know that it is much more typical that matrescence is a process and there is always so much more to each of our stories. 

If we think about becoming a mother, or matrescence, as a whole stage of life like adolescence, when can we say that we have fully arrived on the other side? What defines or separates the before and after from one another?