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Dena Botbyl

DenaJuly 9, 2010

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Welcome

Welcome to Live, Love, Simple. This is our little corner of the world. We are so grateful to have you here. We are a blended family of 8! This is our story of family life, faith + grace, heart-centered living, suburban homesteading, and all of the magic + madness that happens in between. Thanks for stopping by.

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Magic is everywhere, if you know where to look. 🌿✨

#whatmarinawore #littleandbrave #childhoodunplugged

This Mother’s Day marks the completion of my fir

This Mother’s Day marks the completion of my first decade as a mother. It’s difficult to believe. It seems like only yesterday I experienced the first flutter of knowledge that I was to become a mother and just as they promised it would, 10 years passed in the blink of an eye.

Motherhood was the only job that I wanted all of my life. It was the only constant. If you know me, you know that I am whimsical & my dreams are fleeting. My desire comes & goes; my commitment to any task or occupation waxes & wanes, like the moon. But that was never the case with motherhood.

As soon as I began consciously wanting in life, I wanted to be a mother. And that never changed.

The gift of motherhood overcame my life and changed everything, but most of all, it was everything that I had prayed it would be & more. I knew that motherhood would mean a love so vast & incomprehensible that it would change me forever, in all of the best ways, but still—I could have never imagined the depth of it. The joy, the grief, the terror, the magic; the love, the love, the love.

My children are my greatest gifts from God; and my most important honor in life is mothering them.

I am grateful to my own mother for teaching me unconditional love, so that I too could give it.

Praying that all know peace today, those grieving, those celebrating, those longing, those loving, and everyone in between. 🌿

Can I take it to a morning Where the fields are pa

Can I take it to a morning
Where the fields are painted gold
And the trees are filled with memories
Of the feelings never told?
When the evening pulls the sun down
And the day is almost through
Oh, the whole world it is sleeping
But my world is you 🌿✨

#twinmom #momof6 #motherhoodunplugged #childhoodunplugged #littleandbrave

If you’ve read parts 1 & 2 of my “Wintering in

If you’ve read parts 1 & 2 of my “Wintering in Spring” series then you already know why this is such a big deal. 🥹 I am 39 today. I want to say this. The most important thing in life is truth. You must be true to those whom you love and you must be true to yourself. You can never, not ever, live anything less than your own truth and you cannot ever let anyone else tell you what your truth is. A good life is a life spent living as honestly and authentically as possible. (I said a good life, not an easy life. That’s important.) It took me 39 years to fully understand this as much as I do now, and something tells me I have a long way to go yet still. 🌙🤍

Enjoy today’s full Flower Moon lunar eclipse. It came to celebrate my 39th with us. ✨

#fullflowermoon #39andfine #lunareclipse

Getting to this point——deciding to winter in s

I’ve started this so many times. But I could nev

“You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep

“You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.” —Pablo Neruda

• • • • •

Lilacs have always held a special place in my heart. My mother has told me many times the beautiful story of how she left our house to go into the hospital in labor with me on May 4th, 1984. On that day all of the lilac bushes surrounding our yard were still closed. When she returned home with me 5 days later, the bushes were open in all of their glory to welcome me home.

Thank you to my dear uncle for bringing me flowers from those very same bushes this morning. What a blessing. ✨

#springtime #seasonsofblossom #pabloneruda #lilacseason #intentionalseasons

I like this picture. I like it because it captures

I like this picture. I like it because it captures the moment of life that I am in. I was trying to work at the kitchen table but Jordan was fussy & wanted to be held. At least one or other of the twins is fussy about 90% of the time. So I love that I captured this moment because it encapsulates so much of what life is right now. I am disheveled & tired & full of love & patience & grace. And usually alone with babies & children. 🤎

I took the twins for their well-visit this week, 3 months late, which is about right for this season of life. But they are doing amazingly & what a blessing. Jonah is off the charts for height & 27th percentile for weight. My skinny man. Jordan is 97th percentile for height & 75th for weight. It’s wild how I documented Roman’s growth & development so meticulously and how with the twins, I hardly even know what day it is. Differences between first vs. third & fourth babies, plus a decade of life experience between these two postpartum periods. How much I have learned & grown & suffered & changed, too. How different are the things that I value now vs. what I valued then. And how, wonderful to be here after all of it.

In a couple of weeks I will turn 39. My last year in my thirties. Wow. So many thoughts but mostly a soul-deep gratitude for where I am. Although life is hard (really hard) right now, I love myself (my soul) so much. I’d almost like to freeze myself here because my heart and my brain have come so fucking far. Hard-earned, hard-earned, hard-earned wisdom.

I am tired. I am abundant. I am a weaver of magic. But no, don’t freeze me here. I’ve got so much left to do. 🍃✨

There was a moment this winter when I thought, how

There was a moment this winter when I thought, how can I survive this drowning? How can I survive the excruciating pain, the wanting, the losing, the suffocation? The ache became too much to bear—the dull ache, the ecstatic ache, the ache of devastation. There was the cold & the dark, the ice & the snow, and I knew then of the suffering to come. I could only think, how?

But, look, here I am now and the heaviness and the creeping fear that it would never end, are just memories once again. The light has returned and I survived. I survived. Spring is a rebirth and it brought the light back. Everything that had gone dark and grey is filling in with color, with life. The trees are saturated like an oil painting and every petal on every flower shakes with the vibration of hope.

I am tired and my legs are wobbly. Like an animal held in a cage for a very long time, I try to run and I fall. But I will take baby steps. And little by little, I will remember how to fly.

Take notice of what light does—to everything. Take notice.

You were always going to survive this. ✨

#hopeisthethingwithfeathers

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