Hello, it is the 28th and I am back with a new chapter! It feels like so long since I've read and edited anything even though it's only been a month. I've been very creative lately and have thankfully used my hiatus well! Along with creating some exciting stuff to get uploaded in 2025, I've been watching quite a few films that have inspired me as well. One of them is a film called Nightbitch as Shannon recommended it to me. I thought it was a good film - and the title certainly piques your interest :P It got me thinking a lot about motherhood and so, this chapter became about that! It was fun to get into Misty's head regarding the subject. I hope you enjoy :)

Motherhood has never been what I thought it would be.

I was never one of these little girls with a hamper filled with baby dolls to play with. The closest I ever got was hand me down women with figures like twigs from my sisters. Wooden shapes that Dad made for me. I would clutch them close to me, carrying them everywhere. But they weren't infants.

I had a lot of wooden toys. Dad spent hour upon hour crafting them for me. I had soft, cuddly toys too. A Tortuga with a soft shell and a Vaporeon with iridescent ears - even a Magikarp. I would take them everywhere with me and sometimes cradle them in my arms, feeding them a bite of whatever was for dinner.

They were my babies. But I still don't remember being their mother. That sounds about right for me, doesn't it? Misty Ketchum – or Williams as I was back then – lover of the unwanted. Nurturer of the strange. Leader of the unloved.

I never thought about becoming a parent. Even when I got older and Violet and Lily reached certain ages before me and would gush over the babies of celebrities in magazines, I just did not get it. Perhaps I felt like I still was one of those chubby cheeked babies from the way that they would treat me. Or – even back then before I ever knew it was possible – maybe I thought I would stay young like my parents forever.

Or perhaps I thought that I was going to be a dad! I don't know. All I know is that babies and motherhood meant nothing to me growing up. And I still don't know quite what to make of it all.

I think I started to think of children more when I started going on Pokémon journeys. When Togepi chose me, I felt something that I had never felt before. It's completely bizarre if you know it. Suddenly, your body reacts in ways you can't quite explain – it's overwhelming – but you are offered an intense desire to nurture. To protect.

To this day, I know that Togepi was my first baby! But I still did not wholly feel like their mother. They allowed me to be softer than I had ever been to before. I think I felt like I had been boxed in all my life. I had always been the thorny rose amongst the soft, delicate flower bed that were my sisters. But with Togepi, I found myself able to care so openly. To have no shame to do the silliest of things just to put a smile on their face.

My path leading me towards motherhood started there even though it took a long time for me to even think that I could be a mother. Sometimes I still question it!

I started to think about it increasingly when I watched James become a dad – and Jessie a mother. I guess it dawned on me that if those two bone heads could survive parenthood, then I could as well!

No, it wasn't just that. I guess I saw a softer side to the two of them as well even if back then they were still in Team Rocket. Maybe it made me realize that I didn't have to be perfect to continue the Williams name. I just had to have a lot of love in my heart and be open enough to give it to a sweet little thing.

I knew for the first time in my life that I wanted to be a mother when Ash and I lost that first little baby. That was the first time that I truly realized that I wanted it in my future because the agony of it being taken away was unbearable. That knocked the wind out of me then and it still does now to think about it.

How quickly – how deeply – you can love the idea of something. How rapidly even someone as stubborn as me could make room in their heart for someone that was half me and half the person that I loved beyond being able to describe with words.

I have always been a romantic. Though it took a bit of time to get on the same page about starting a family, as soon as things got serious with Ash, I knew that I wanted to merge our DNA in the same way that we had merged our hearts. I wanted a little baby that was half me and half him as well. A perfect blend of all our best traits. And a beautiful little soup of all the things that drive us crazy about each other too!

And here we are now, five children later. If you had told me as a child that I would have that many then I would have asked you if you were having a laugh!

But it just happened. I can't describe it. It just did. Though I was just a kid when we had the twins, it was the first time in my life that I really felt a purpose. Really felt like I could do something right. I guess they made me believe that even someone like me with all the things that I had done still deserved wonderful things.

But we won't go there...

I still remember those early days with the two of them. I did not get a lot of sleep at all for the first year of their lives because one of them would always be waking the other up. And Ben was such a hungry thing. Things haven't changed that much!

Ash was a heavy sleeper. There were lots of moments just little Benjamin and me – gosh, we haven't called him that in forever – him nursing with a fist full of my t shirt and me staring out into the night from my rocking chair.

I did a lot of thinking staring out into the silence with a mind feeling like it was shouting, desperate to latch onto something – anything. I think those moments solidified a future path appearing out in front of me too though it would take an exceedingly long time for me to wander.

I still cannot tell you what I thought about. But it was a lot of stuff. It was a lot of a lot. I thought about motherhood. And whether I was really cut out for it. And for the first time in a long time, I started to think about my own mother.

I especially did when it was Katie's turn to feed. She would never have been a thing if it weren't for my mom. She was as much a part of her as I was and seeing her little distracted face always made me wonder: did it feel the same way for her to become a mother as it felt for me? Did she second guess herself? Did she sometimes feel alone even with four little girls clamoring for her attention?

Motherhood is tough. I know that I still don't have it figured out. My youngest is nearly six now, can you believe it? The oldest two are seventeen. Before I know it, they will both be eighteen going on nineteen and the age that I was when I first had them.

Do they think about having kids of their own like I did back then? I should ask. I have a feeling that I know what Ben would say! If it isn't the open road or a mountain to climb – either literally or figuratively – then he isn't interested.

I imagine Katie would have a good answer for me. A thoughtful one. She's always filled with a bountiful amount of them. She's not like I was back when I was her age though the paths we have trodden are sometimes undeniably alike.

She's not like me now oftentimes. Not like anybody else I know. When I fell in love with Ash, I knew that I wanted children. But I imagine that Katie has thought about whether a child would want her. She has this ability to see from every angle, you see.

I wasn't like that. I knew that I wanted to have a baby and that was that. I did not even really know my reasons other than it was what I wanted. I don't regret it for a single second. As much as motherhood has been like crawling out of a bloody pit of raw emotions sometimes and it's felt like my heart has burst out of my chest and split into five separate parts – six if you count JJ – I would never take a single moment of it back.

It can be a thankless task. I felt invisible a lot of as a kid and at times I felt invisible as a mother too. But it's kinda worth it when after a long day your kid still seeks you out as a place to rest their weary head – or they openly tell you that they know all that you have done for them, and they thank you for it.

I know that I am done having babies. I'm not James – five is more than enough! But I know that I am not done experiencing the raw and wild and yet tender, delicate journey of being a mother. It's the hardest venture that I've ever undertaken. I had to give my quick temper the boot a long time ago. There were no room for outbursts – not when a toddler was taking their turn to scream.

I have had to forgive myself over and over again. That one has been a challenge. But when I look at each one of my children, I know why I undertook this journey with my beloved Ash. I know that I was destined to be their mother. And I knew that I loved them – I wanted them – long before I saw their little faces and felt their hands wrapping around my finger.

I imagine that I had love for them in my heart right from my own first, roaring cries.

Being Ben's mother has filled me with joy and laughter. With my whole heart I adore getting to see a boy that is so much of my husband grow into a man. But he has a stubbornly burning fire in his belly and I know that it comes from me. He'll do better with it than I could know. He knew how to use it as a tool rather than a weapon a lot sooner than I did.

Nurturing little James has allowed me to get closer with my own emotions. To celebrate the sides of me that are quirky or unorthodox and to show them off with all the pride that I can muster. We've had to think on our feet raising him. But it has been a pleasure. And I'm so glad the world has been able to adapt and hold space for someone like him.

I adore being Jessika's mother. She's far girlier than I predicted but what came as an even bigger shock was coming face to face with the temper that I had at that age! But she's calmed down a lot out on the road. She needs to breathe, and she needs to try. Jessika is a lot of me, but I am far prouder of her than I ever could be of me.

Rey is just a ray of sunshine – her Uncle James named her well. Sometimes I feel like I have been on the biggest journey with her of all my children. She loved me when I hit rock bottom. Really loved me. I know that they all did, and I thank them every day for that. But she barely knew me yet loved me. She has taught me to see the sunnier side of life. I can only wish I have taught her as much as she has taught me in six short years!

And Katie... I have a challenging time describing what she means to me. She is the reason for my musings today, really. The reason for the thoughts that are pouring out of me. She is a better young woman than I ever could be. Diplomatic and thoughtful and completely original. I've been on a massive journey with her as well. And no wonder.

Along with Ben, she made me a mother. I think that I was destined to always be one. Maybe it started as a child with my toys and then again with Togepi. It had a new beginning watching those scumbags become delightful parents. The dream became very real – very visceral – when I was just shy of being eighteen.

But Ben and Katie were the beginning. And thanks to the two of them and the three that followed – and Ash too, of course - I have been on the best journey of my life.

Motherhood has never been what I thought it would be. It's forced me to wear fragments of my heart outside of my body and I've had to watch them venture into the world too. Seeing them make the mistakes I too have made has been tough. But seeing them handle them with far more grace has been humbling.

For me, motherhood has been brutal and bloody and a complete loss of control. But it has also been tender and transformative and brought me closer to myself than ever before. Brought me closer to my parents – especially my mom – as I realized the things that she too sacrificed to allow me to tread the path to one day achieve my own dreams.

I look at all five of my children – six, for JJ is my heart equally as much, of course he is – and I see walking miracles. Not the kind of miracles that require pleading with touching palms and gazing towards the heavens. No, they are the kind of miracles made of bones and flesh. Something far more normal. Something far more typical. More human. But profound all the same.

Motherhood is a miracle as overlooked as it can be sometimes. It is the toughest task anyone can ever undertake. And I have a feeling that some of my greatest lessons are yet to come.

Bring it on, I say. No one handles shit quite like a mother.

There you go! Thanks so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed :) A bit of a longer one, but I had so much fun getting into Misty's head for this! I mostly came up with it all on the spot and, like I said, I was feeling pretty inspired by the film I watched. I was laughing with Shannon on FaceTime not too long ago about how James has the reputation for having a lot of kids but Misty's own mother, Lynne, ends up with 7 and Misty has 5 which certainly aren't small numbers! It made me chuckle here to write Misty referring to Jessie and James as "boneheads" and "scumbags" - I can assure you that by this point in her life, it is affectionately :P Thank you again for reading and I will be back to update Pikachu Tales soon! I'm looking to end this little hiatus on February 12th so perhaps I will see you then :)

Amy signing out!