“The Bloom That Stayed”

There was a time when I didn’t believe I would ever be a mother.

Not because I didn’t want to be — though I told people that. Not because I didn’t love children — I always have. It’s just… I couldn’t see a version of the future where I could hold a child and still hold onto myself.

I thought motherhood was for women who had their lives figured out. I thought it was for people who never questioned who they were, or how they loved, or whether they were allowed to want more. And I… I questioned everything.

Then Elise came into my life — steady, whole, and heartbreakingly clear. She was the kind of person who believed in planting things. Gardens. Hopes. Conversations that take years to bloom. She’d ask questions like, “What if the life you’re afraid of is the one that actually fits?” and then she'd leave the silence there, soft and terrifying.

We never sat down and decided to be mothers. Not exactly. It happened more like a hush — the same way everything happened between us. A slow unfolding. A seed dropped into open palms.

When Magnolia arrived, nothing made sense and everything did.

She had this quiet weight to her. Not heavy — just real. She was born early in the morning, the kind of dawn that stains the sky with colors it doesn’t use any other time of day. Elise held her first. I held her second. And even though neither of us gave birth to her, she belonged to us both from the beginning.

We named her Magnolia because of the tree that grew in Elise’s grandmother’s yard. It only bloomed once a year — big, thick-petaled flowers that smelled like lemon and honey and rain. But when they bloomed… you remembered. You felt something.

We wanted her to have a name that meant strength without shouting. Beauty without permission. We wanted her to know that softness and survival were not opposites. That there is power in blooming when no one expects it.

Some days I still don’t feel like I’ve earned the title “mother.” Especially when strangers ask who the real mom is. As if biology is the only thing that binds. As if love that’s chosen isn’t still carved from the deepest part of your bones.

But then Magnolia will do something like crawl into bed during a thunderstorm and curl her hand around mine without a word. Or she’ll bring me a drawing she made of our family — always with two moms and a tree. And I’ll remember: I don’t need to prove it. I just need to be it.

Motherhood, for me, is not a title I grew into. It’s a garden I walk through every day, learning what needs sunlight, what needs pruning, what needs time. And love — the kind I have with Elise, the kind we pour into Magnolia — is the soil we keep turning.

She is ours.

Not by blood. Not by law, not always by the world's understanding.

But by every sunrise. Every story. Every whispered “I love you” in the in-between hours.

Magnolia. The bloom that stayed.