Often asked, “What do you do for yourself?” by well-meaning professionals that I come into contact with while searching for help for my children, I stumble for the right answer.

I understand that these young, often childless, fairly inexperienced workers fresh out of college cannot fathom why anyone would choose to live like I do, the mama of 39 children.

I would not have chosen this, at their age, either. Although it seems I’ve always been someone’s mother, having gone from the oldest in my own sib group of 4, to the mom of one before I’d left my teen years, I can fully appreciate someone’s else’s non-demanding lifestyle.

But that’s not what I chose. I deliberately chose, slowly and with much thought and planning, to allow my family to grow to this size, not knowing initially when I’d stop, but knowing I’d know, with certainty, when enough is enough.

If I wanted time to ‘do for myself’ I’d have stopped adopting children decades ago.

I totally understood the time commitment involved, if anything I was only blind sided by the severity of the mental health issues I’d soon face in some very troubled children.

I used to read a good bit in my ‘free time’, a phrase I use loosely since free time has been at a premium my entire life. I rarely read fiction anymore as there’s so much I need to still learn about real life, but I do have strong interests outside child raising.

I’m obsessed with horticulture and find it to be rewarding, challenging, and every aspect of it is fun to me, from digging to weeding, from planting to harvesting. Indeed, it is my hopes that many of my children will become readers and gardeners.

We probably have enough gardens here on our land to qualify as a small farm but that sounds too pretentious, so I suppose I simply garden.

Several of my grown children garden as well, to me that includes putting out pots of herbs or merely planting several pepper plants. Every single child of mine knows the advantages of organically grown produce and the inexpensive beauty of fresh cut flowers, house plants in their rooms brings calm to their environments. I have thousands of daffodils, already blooming, and kids are gathering armloads to cut and place in vases or mason jars, whatever will hold these perfumed beauties.

These bulbs have multiplied heavily since I planted them 15 years ago, as do all my plants, and the divisions have found their way to my grown kid’s yards as well. Even Cristy, in a rental house, planted irises, once grown in my mother’s Virginia yard, divided and transplanted to Georgia, divided yet again, reminding her of family life with me. This from an older daughter, adopted at age 12, who raged for the next decade, trying to destroy the family that she didn’t believe could possibly love her.

Funny what time can do.

These horticulture adventures have solidly sustained me through those very trying times.