Welcome to Holding Both

Welcome to Holding Both

There are seasons in life that don’t arrive quietly.

They show up and rearrange everything — your routines, your relationships, your sense of safety, your understanding of what you thought you knew. They ask more of you than you feel prepared to give. They leave you holding things you never imagined you’d have to carry.

This is one of those seasons for me.

Holding Both is a space I’ve been circling for a long time. I didn’t always have the language for it, but I’ve been living it for years — learning how to hold joy and grief at the same time, how to love fiercely without guarantees, how to stand in truths that don’t cancel each other out.

I’m Maria. I’m a mom through adoption, a special education leader, and a person who knows systems both professionally and painfully personally. My life is shaped by disability, motherhood, mental health, and a love that refuses to be simple.

My son Carter is at the center of much of my story. He is tender, complicated, funny, anxious, loving, and endlessly human. He has taught me more than I ever learned in any classroom — about patience, fear, resilience, grief, and the quiet, radical act of acceptance.

Over the last couple of months, our lives have shifted in ways I’m still learning how to name. There has been trauma. There has been loss. There has also been relief, safety, and the strange disorientation that comes when two opposing truths exist at the same time.

I’m not ready to tell that story all at once.

What I am ready to do is begin telling it honestly — one piece at a time.

This space isn’t about answers or advice. It isn’t about fixing or reframing or finding silver linings. It’s about naming what’s real, even when it’s uncomfortable. Especially when it’s uncomfortable.

Here, I’ll write personal essays about:

• motherhood and disability

• grief that doesn’t have an ending

• love that requires hard choices

• mental health and acceptance

• systems that fail and systems that help

• what it means to be both fierce and fragile

Some posts will look back. Some will sit squarely in the present. Some will inch toward a future I’m still learning how to imagine.

I believe deeply that more than one thing can be true at the same time:

• You can be heartbroken and grateful.

• You can be exhausted and relieved.

• You can know too much and still miss things.

• You can fight with everything you have and learn when to let go.

This is not a linear story. It never has been.

If you’ve found your way here because you’re holding something heavy — a child on a different path, a life that didn’t turn out the way you planned, grief that doesn’t fit neatly into words — you’re not alone.

You don’t have to be strong here.
You don’t have to know what comes next.
You don’t have to resolve anything.

You just have to be willing to sit with more than one truth at a time.

That’s what Holding Both is for.

If you’d like to stay, you’re welcome to subscribe. New essays will arrive as I’m able to write them — gently, intentionally, and honestly.

I’m glad you’re here.

— Maria