The love you feel for your children is intense.
When you first see them, hold them, get to know them, and all of their little noises.
There is a day where that love grows into something so immense that you think you may just burst.
As your first year together progresses the love you experience is this strange and new, yet so familiar and old love story.
A love you have never felt before, but somehow always had.
The relationships you have with your small faces, they will fill you full
they will also deplete you.
They will consume you
but cannot be all of you.
They energize you and make you feel so light
at the same time exhausting a young mother and this love is a weight of family that is heavy.
As a new parent, the line between joy and depression is thin.
The line between confidence and anxiety is also thin.
As a seasoned parent, that line thins out even more.
Anxiety builds and the heavy weight of family sets in.
And all of us go through this cycle.
As they age, our knowledge of what is the right thing to do or say...
all of our parenting becomes less and less confident.
They are helpless and so are you.
They want answers but they didn't come with a manual
so you hold on and you keep trying and changing because so do they.
We don't talk about the darkness
we don't show it on social media
we don't want to feel like we are the only ones doing it all wrong
except that we are.
And without the comfort of a nonjudgmental relationship, we become even more isolated,
and the line thins.
This love for our children,
it thankfully destroys our ego
it changes so much of us
and it makes us trust less.
It makes us trust ourselves less
it makes us trust our person less
it makes us question too much.
And the line thins.
But somehow, in their little eyes
in their nurturing hugs, you find your hope.
You find your will
you find your strength
you find your place
and you find your space to be their mom.
Somehow, in the ones you are raising
you find your way.
Because they have always been forgiving.
From the moment you didn't know how to put on their clothes, or how to bathe them...
to the day you snap and scream something at them...
they always forgive, with open loving arms.
In their little selves, they realize how hard we are all trying.
And my promise is to give them a chance at a bad day or bad moments, as often as they give me mine.
And to always come back to love.
