Jamie – How has the injury affected your parenting?

One of the hardest things for me was early on being a mom is not being able to do what normal moms can do. I would take my kids to a park. Like say we had soccer practice, and there was a park nearby, and I couldn’t access the park the best and so I would let my kids go.  I had to learn early on to let go, I couldn’t helicopter, I couldn’t hover over them, I had to just pray and say, “you’re going to be alright.” But the hardest thing for me was my kids were on a tire swing, and there was another mom pushing my kids, and I had a moment where I broke down and said, “this is hard because I can’t do what normal moms do with their kids.” But it’s been, the good outweighs the bad, but that was definitely the hardest part of parenting for me was understanding that I couldn’t be like a normal mom. Just like even putting my child into its car seat—I brought this pillow to show the person I’m going to be talking to—but no balance means kids gets kind of shoved in places sometimes. So, I’m just transfer him like, “sorry buddy,” and I kind of had to plop them in there. Oh, it was so difficult when they were little, so difficult, now it’s great.