Ramblings of a Southern Mama

About me

Lori, a Southern mama

This blog is Lori’s own record of family life — the ordinary days, the hard weeks, and the recipes that got dinner on the table.

• Mother to Jordan, with the birth story told in three parts.
• Carries the family insurance and returned to work after maternity leave.
• Colleagues donated sick leave so she could stay home with Jordan for almost 10 weeks.
• Writes about meal planning, holidays and changing her mindset.

There is a particular kind of quiet that settles over a Southern house in the early morning, before the day has decided what it wants to be. Coffee goes on, the porch light clicks off, and the mind starts wandering through the small things that need remembering. This is where most of these ramblings begin, somewhere between the first sip and the first worry. Raising kids, keeping a home, nursing a heart that has been through its share of long nights, all of it gets written down here as honestly as it can be told.

Birth stories take up a good deal of space on these pages, because some seasons simply refuse to be summarized. There were weeks of waiting, monitors and hospital hallways, nurses who became familiar faces, and a husband who stayed close through every hour of it. Some of it was frightening, and some of it was holy. Writing it out later helped make sense of the fear, and it kept the gratitude from slipping away once ordinary life hurried back in to fill the room.

Recovery has a way of teaching patience to people who never asked for the lesson. Days measured in small victories, a shower taken, a few steps down the hall, a first real meal. The body asks for rest while the mind keeps making lists, and learning to let the lists wait is its own kind of work. There is a tenderness in being cared for, and an odd humility in accepting help from friends and family who show up without being asked and stay longer than expected.

Babies change everything, and they change it slowly and all at once. First smiles, first colds, first nights that stretch on forever, first photos that get looked at a hundred times. The house rearranges itself around a crib and a diaper bag, and the calendar fills with appointments and milestones. Some days feel endless and some years pass in a blink, and somehow both are true at the same time, which is probably the closest thing to wisdom anyone ever hands a new mama.

In between the big stories there are weeknight dinners, spilled things, school mornings, and the small shifts in thinking that come from living through all of it. A quiet corner for oils, a verse copied onto an index card, a note left on the counter for later. None of it is grand on its own, but gathered together it makes a life. That is what these pages are for, keeping the heart above the head and the eyes wide open, one entry at a time.