@revelatori made a great post about a cactus she bought from Ikea - cause where else do you get em'? And how it didn't bloom until she found the perfect spot for it. Something very similar happened to me. The unruly cactus pictured used to sit in my room.
There is no perfect, ideal, and cohesive road for motherhood, only the twist and turns of the “figure it out yourself” sort... Was I ever a fully-fledged person before I had my children? Why yes, of course I was… I had a life and it was a great one –...