If you remember nothing else today, remember this.
You are a mother, a father, a being who is a source of protection, comfort and of inspiration. Yes you’ve made mistakes but you are only human. That’s what makes you so beautiful, so admirable. You have the capacity to think, and feel and to know. You are full of wisdom and intuition if you would only learn to trust those feelings inside of you.
Yes you have made mistakes. There have been circumstances beyond your control that have left you wounded and broken. The trauma, the threats, the deceit, the attempts to control and manipulate, the massive elephant in the room that nobody dare talk about.
You quickly learnt - as you should - to self-protect and to guard your heart, to not show your real self. You learnt to hide your emotions, your desires and anything that would make you vulnerable to rejection or abandonment.
With these same wounds you raised a child, or two or three. You swiftly taught them the same hard lessons. You showed them how to survive, how to white-knuckle their way through a difficult, confusing and complex world.
Watching your children grow, you started to learn from them the less calloused path to love. You began to open yourself up. You learned to reflect, to become aware of those hidden, secret parts that for so long lived in the shadows. With that learning came the pain of regret, the discomfort of knowing that those you most love in the world didn’t get what they needed when they most needed it. Not because you were hard of heart or cruel. You simply did not know. You were doing the best you knew at the time, and you gave them all you had.
You are truly a brave one, because to feel is to expose yourself to all the sorrow and to all the joy that this world has to offer. Mothering, fathering is humbling and courageous work. You are learning that you may never fully rid yourself of the mistakes of the past. But you are also learning that each day is a new opportunity. Each day is filled with moments that you will respond to in just the way your children need. And that is more than ‘good enough’
In the words of poet Nayyirah Waheed:
Be softer with you. You are a breathing thing. A memory to someone. A home to a life.