Mama Pants is one of my new favorite bloggers, writing at The Adventures of the Family Pants. I met her through Twitter and #iPPP, and she is funny, kind, honest, and an all-around good person.

She is the fierce, loving mama to Mr. Pants and Ms. Plum, two ridiculously adorable children.

Mama Pants is an amazing, heart-on-her-sleeve writer. Check out her other guests posts, like this one about navigating the holidays with a child that has sensory issues.

Thank you so much for being here and sharing your heart (and dreams) with us, M.P.!

Growing up I was a dramatic little thing.  I spent the first twenty years of my life singing and dancing. In my daydreams of my bound-to –be- amazing adult life, I was the ingénue stepping off the dirty bus in the middle of Times Square, suitcase in hand, singing to passersby about the grand city and how I’d make it there.  I dreamed of glitter and lights. Eight shows a week.  I’d have bloodied and bandaged toes from dancing my ass off. I’d gargle with hot water and honey to keep my voice in good health and right before I hit the stage to belt out the show stopping number to an audience enraptured by my Dolly Parton meets Patty Lupone pipes, I’d do a shot of olive oil.  A star.  I would be a Broadway star. I was certain.

But it didn’t turn out that way.

In my late teens I started reading in the creepy section of the bookstore. Not the ghosts and paranormal section, but the real deal creepy section. True Crime.  I devoured book after book about the worst things man has ever done to another man.   I was fascinated by criminal profiling. Obsessed with it.  And this was before television shows about crime scene investigation became a dime a dozen.  I would be a profiler for the FBI. I was sure of it. I knew I be the best profiler in the entire world. I would catch the bad guys and I would bring justice to grieving families. It would be the perfect job for me.

But it wasn’t meant to be.

I remember the exact moment it occurred to me that I wouldn’t pursue it. I was reading a book written by one of the more famous FBI profilers.  In the book he described how his family fell apart.  He couldn’t muster up the empathy and understanding for a scraped knee or a stubbed toe after the awful things he would see. He was never home and when he was home he was far away in his head thinking while his family grew up without him.

I wanted a family.

And it seemed that was the only thing that I actually knew about myself for sure. I had pipe-dreams coming out of my nose. Most of which would dissolve or fly away but I knew with all of my cells that I wanted to be a mom.  That I needed to be a mom. I expected to be a mom. It was just a given.

In my middle twenties I walked shaky-legged into an interview for the local domestic violence shelter.  I had no clue if I could actually DO the job. But they hired me and for the next ten years I worked with kids and moms. I helped the children to express themselves through art and play.  I helped new moms to understand how to care for their babies and seasoned moms to cope with the struggles they faced raising their babies on their own.  Every mom I worked with eventually asked me the same question, “Do you have kids?” My matter of fact answer was always “No, not yet”.  On the inside though, it always burned a bit because that was the hole in my life.

Becoming a mother was my very first dream. The one that, at 30 yrs. old, I was beginning to think might not become a reality. All of my other big dreams fell away because my first dream trumped all that came after.  I couldn’t spend every night away from my kids singing and dancing on Broadway.  I couldn’t spend weeks away from my family profiling some serial killer in another state.  I just couldn’t be the mama that I wanted to be while pursuing these big and all-encompassing careers.

I wanted to grow a person in my body and then I wanted to change their diapers, let them spit up on me, feed them, rock them to sleep, guide them and love them forever.  I dreamed of family road trips and graduations. I dreamed of grandbabies and weddings. Christmas morning and jumping in mud puddles. I dreamed of family.

And at 33 years old, my dream came true. It’s not a very flashy dream or one that will achieve any kind of fame or fortune. But it fills me up. And as it turns out,   I am exactly the singing and dancing crime-fighting drama llama of a mama that I wanted to be. Not perfect by any stretch because perfection is boooooring. So I never strive for it and I never expect it.  What I do expect is a lifetime of love and challenges and happiness and sadness.  And more love.

Love is my greatest expectation.  Giving and receiving. Because I believe that love is everything. That at the end of this life the only measure of success is in the love that you create and leave behind. It sounds like hippie-dippy flowers and bunnies talk, I know.  But that’s alright. I’m just gonna keep on nurturing this family and let them nurture me. So that in the end, when I’m slipping across the finish line of this life, I will have no regrets. Only love.

Get to know Mama Pants on her fabulous blog, Facebook, and Twitter. Go, now!