Seventeen

When I started WCw/WC, Averie was 17 years old.  Today it's WCw/WC's 17th birthday.  My blog is the same age that my first child was when I started it.  That puts Caris at 15, and The Grommet at 13.

In case you can't read between the lines, this blog was the survival journal and coping strategy for wading the waters of parenting teenagers.  It gave me a place to sort out, vent, and ultimately share to wonder of raising humans into adulthood in a, let's face it, fucked up world.

We made it.  All of us.  We made it to an even more fucked up world.  But hey, I'm gonna say this about that.  My kids may have cringed a lot over the past 17 years of my blabbing about their worlds. That's ok.  I lived.  They lived.  If there was embarrassment, we worked through it.  I'm proud of the work I've done.  Not only as a mother, but as a war-time correspondent from the front lines.  Sometimes, it felt that way.  But mostly, it was magical.  I look back on these pages with pride, humility, and more than anything, a great sense of wonder that I was lucky enough to call these amazing human beings my offspring.  And even more than that, that I had the presence of mind 17 years ago to write it all down.

It still amazes me.  All of it.