As a parent, you can’t help but to live a little vicariously through your children. After all, you are responsible for them. Their accomplishments make you proud. Their wounds hurt you. But for a mom, it is so much more than “we gave birth” to them. There is an invisible umbilical cord that is never severed, though instead of providing life to the child, it sustains life for the mother. Take it away and we no longer possess the ability to function independently.
As our children grow up, every decision they make, people reflect onto the mother. Nobody, more so, than the mother herself. As the child pulls away, makes decisions on their own, the mother feels solely responsible. She questions every decision she ever made. Her nights are spent lying awake thinking “if I had only done that”, ” what did I do wrong”, “how did I fail”.
It’s almost impossible for the mother to come to terms with the inevitable fact that “children, as they grow, make their own choices in life”. They too must learn by their own experiences and mistakes. All we can do is stand there feeling helpless while wanting desperately to save them. Then along comes the lesson of tough love. I always thought this applied to the child. Instead, it is a final lesson for the mother. It’s the hardest test we’ve ever been faced with. There’s no study guide, no manual to look back on, we didn’t take notes to prepare ourselves for this and nobody told us that everything we taught our children would be a Final Exam that we had to receive a 100% on.
RaenellDawn 01/28/2016
