Mothering Them

There are moments when I catch myself repeating patterns —

the same tone, the same ache, the same exhaustion

I once promised I’d never pass on.

Healing while mothering is messy work.

It’s holding a child in one arm

while cradling the broken pieces of your own heart in the other.

I’ve learned that love can’t always protect them from life —

but it can shape how they recover from it.

So I try to teach what I was never taught:

that tenderness doesn’t make you weak,

and needing rest isn’t the same as giving up.

Some days, I fail.

I raise my voice when I should have breathed.

I retreat when I should have reached out.

And when I do, I sit in the quiet and tell myself —

you’re still learning, too.

Mothering them has become another way of mothering myself.

Every bedtime story, every apology, every soft reminder

that love doesn’t leave when it’s hard —

it stays, it grows, it forgives.

They will never know the girl I was,

the one who cried herself to sleep

wondering if she would ever feel safe.

But maybe, in my arms,

they’ll find what she needed all along —

a home that doesn’t hurt,

a mother who keeps trying.