sweet kids.
I have always loved you.
Like always.
Sometimes even with the love I wonder. I wonder what you remember. I wonder if you think that your mom tried or if your mom was sad or what you will remember. I worry about that. Because I want you to have a childhood where you look back and think that it was good.
But I know there have been hard, hard moments.
I hate that you have those moments in your life.
I wish life could look like the picture of motherhood that I had planned. I really do. I wish I could have given you all the things I hoped you would have had or gone the places I dreamed about taking you. But I did give you one thing – love. And love doesn’t run out from motherhood.
It is there.
In thick and thin and good days and bad days and flowing in abundance and tough as nails. Sometimes it is harder to find. It’s hard to remember it when you slam doors in my face or tell me how much you hate me or that I’ve ruined your life. Those moments are such painful moments, such valleys of motherhood. I’m secretly so grateful I didn’t know about those moments in those first days of holding you. Those days, those beginning days of little hats and middle of the night feedings, they are such a blur of memories, of emotions, but that promise I gave to you, those hushed singing words of forever loving you?
It has always been the truth.
That’s the secret of motherhood.
You can push and be angry and mess up and stumble and leave and we will still love you.
We might be disappointed. We might blame ourselves. We might be angry. We might feel like we’ve failed. We might not have any answers. We might cry. We might yell. We might ground you. We might lock ourselves in our rooms. We might get upset over spilled milk. We might show up at your friends homes and drive you home. We might make you do things you think are unfair. We mother.
But we will show up. We will love.
I have never given up on my love.
I will love you. Forever.
That was my promise to you the day you were born. That was my promise to you each time you blew out candles as the year moved around. That is my promise every single day. Every lunch box packed, every note signed, every night spent waiting up. That is my promise to you now.
That is my promise. You see, as many valleys as there have been, there have also been so many beautiful and wonderful things. I remember them too. I remember. I remember letting you go and watching you flip that tassel over and no longer being the one that you came home to at night.
I have always loved you.
I always will.
You are worth being loved. You are worth having me, as imperfect as I am, show up for you day after day.
Together we make a family. A story.
And I love that I am the one who gets the greatest role of my life.
Your mom.
~Me.
