"Oh, I never wanted to be a mother."

I saw her so unappreciated, overworked, stressed and angry. Of course, I can see her in a better light now, more nuanced, than when her anger was offloaded on me at times. 

 

It’s all good now.

 

My 15-year-old self has healed herself and being a mother to two teenage boys has given me understanding on how much healing my mom has done to even show up in the ways she has then and has continued to show up now. My mother serves as a constant reminder that you can heal forward whatever age you are, whatever you have endured yourself. There is a lot of choice that is involved in who we want to be in this world.

 

We are all allowed to grow and we must. For our own self and with humanity in sight, especially the humans closest to us. 

 

I guess that is the hardest part for me as a mother to recognise and to be so painfully aware of: My own humanity and error, even when trying so hard not to harm, sometimes, still harms our most beloved. 

 

Holding my first born in my arms after a long and painful birth was a beautiful and terrifying moment. Here, I was holding the one that I had longed and prayed for, eaten all the right foods for, taken all the right vitamins for, and love flooded my whole being like nothing I have ever experienced. It was frightening. 

 

I loved this boy with every fibre of my being. Mama Bear truly had been awakened and it hit me in those early seconds of his life that “I will never be enough for him!” He would experience pain in this life and I wouldn’t always be able to protect him from it. What, if I accidentally harmed him. This recognition of feeling so inadequate caused me to hit postnatal depression. 

 

Thankfully the intensity of this feeling settled after a long few months and I learned to trust that doing my best was going to be all I could do. So, the best I was going to attempt. 

My boy is 14 years old now. And I can truly see that I have given my best to him while also recognising that it still has not been enough at times. He has seen my errors, my wrong and even my bad.  So many sorry’s have been given and many more attempts to amend and fix what I had broken have transpired. 

 

And maybe that is the best of humanity we can give. Our best and our apology when we have wronged somebody along with our consistent attempts of making amends. Perfection is too hard of a judge to live up to. We are after all, only human. But love, that seems to be a possible route. 

 

After miscarrying my second child, I had a dream about a little boy. To cut a very long story short, my husband and I decided to foster a little boy shortly after this dream, who looked just like the one I had seen in that dream. We adopted him after a few years and he has just turned 11 years old. That whole journey has been a wild ride of learning, unlearning and relearning on how to best love him. 

 

The same inadequate feelings that have plagued me before, still plague me now. 

 

But I have also continued to love myself. In fact, I have grown to love myself. To be kind to myself, to care for my needs has only increased my ability to do so for others around me, most of all my children! I have learned to hold space and take accountability for my errors with compassion for myself. I can call myself higher and recognise that sadly my best is not always enough.