I promised myself I would be softer than the one who raised me. Most days I am. And then, without warning, her voice comes out of my mouth, and I watch my child's face change, and I know exactly what that change feels like from the inside.
I apologise. I hold them. I try again. But at night I lie awake and wonder if the shape of a mother is something you inherit whether you want to or not.
— Anonymous
A Reflection
The fact that you notice is not nothing. It is almost everything.
The parents who wounded us most were often the ones who could not see the change on our faces. You saw it. You named it. You returned.
Repair is not the absence of rupture. It is the presence of return. Your child is not learning that you are perfect. They are learning that love can come back into a room after it has left it. That is a rarer inheritance than softness.
Be gentle with the woman who is trying. She is doing something no one taught her how to do.