I was scrolling through the notes app on my phone — the graveyard of half-baked thoughts, grocery lists, and voice-to-text ramblings — when I found this:

“Sincerely A for June: What a sex podcast taught me about parenting.”

No other context. No links. No elaboration. Just that.

I wish I could tell you what I meant. I wish I could remember the ~genius~ insight I MUST HAVE had in that moment. 

(This email probably would have looked and sounded very different.)

But, as always, I trusted myself to just know what it meant later. And now here we are (later) not knowing what in the world I was talking about. You’d think I’d have learned by now but to be honest, I’m kinda impressed with my unyielding confidence in Future Ali.

This isn’t even the weirdest note I’ve found lately. Others include:

• “Order of makeup operations”
• “Loud blinking”
• “4 Hostas”
• “3321452332546” (hopefully it’s nothing important — and no, it’s not a SSN.)
• And simply: “SPICES”

I don’t know what half of them mean. But they still feel… true?

Motherhood will do that to you. 

It fills your brain with so much — appointments, daycare closures, potty and feeding schedules, emotional weather reports for the whole household — that it leaves little room for clarity. And when there is a clear thought, you jot it down and hope it survives until bedtime. Which it rarely (read: never) does.

I may not know what I was trying to remind myself with that note but here’s what I do know:

This season is a whirlwind.

You are doing so much.
While it’s full of magic and meaning and wild, hilarious moments — it’s also easy to lose track of it while you’re just trying to get through the day.

That’s part of why I do what I do.

Because when you’re the memory-keeper for your whole family, you deserve to be remembered in the memories too.

Photos let you freeze time just long enough to catch your breath. To see your kids as they are now. To see yourself in it with them. To remember that it wasn’t all just noise and mess — it was joy, too.

So no, I can’t remember what that sex podcast taught me about parenting but I can help you hold onto this moment in your story.

If you’d like these notes to land in your inbox instead of finding them later on the internet somewhere between your 14 open tabs, you can sign up for Sincerely, A. It’s where I share the quieter stuff — motherhood, memory, photography, things I’m noticing, things I don’t want to forget — sent every so often, like a letter from a friend. [psssst… it is also where I share session openings, product drops, and other tidbits that are worth being the first to get your hands on.]