27. Thankful

for my lemonade ladies.

 "They're your lemonade." 

Vivian's teacher Janet said this one day a couple of years ago and the name stuck.

I marvel that our five paths intersected.

 We are five moms, each with a daughter who is deaf or hard of hearing.

The details of how we ended up in the same school with our baby girls are unique.

But there's so much that's the same.

We were all first time moms who landed in a place we didn't anticipate when our daughters were born.

We have grieved and experienced heartache.  We have celebrated and chosen joy.

I have so much gratitude for these amazing women: for the understanding that can be spoken and unspoken, for perspective, for being a soft place to land when life feels hard.

Life is starting to pull us in different directions as our daughters grow up: some of us are attending different schools, each of our girls is now a big sister and life (which has felt some complex from the start) is just getting more so.  My friend Susannah (whose camera and husband Matt captured us last month) wrote beautifully about being grateful for forest fires - that "the dark and empty place where the future was unknown is a part of who we are and where we have been, but these incredible relationships have been an unforeseen gift that has poked through the charred earth."

I have so much gratitude for my Lemonade Ladies.