by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
Maybe we’ve been expecting it for far too long, this stoicism. This bravery. This “everything will be alright” as long as you can act like it will be.
You sit on your great white horse, holding on for dear life, like the knight, like the savior you are, and every time we have a problem, or every time we feel bent, or every time we are afraid, it is to you we look. We pressure, and we expect, and we define what cannot, in fact, be defined. We don’t let you feel what you need to feel, and we don’t permit you to walk through the depths of depression and come out on the other side, and we don’t invite you to share what’s hidden in your heart, because it’s scary, and it’s dangerous to see someone who’s supposed to be strong act so weak and vulnerable. What do we do with it?
We pretend it doesn’t exist. We expect you to solve all the problems, not be the problem, and it’s too much, too much, too much for anyone, especially you, brothers. I know why you’ve tripped into a place where you cannot stand vulnerable, because that vulnerability pushes your sisters away. It makes your wives uncomfortable and it makes your daughters afraid, and no man wants that, does he? You must be the pinnacle of a superhero, and you must be able to handle everything and you must have all the best ideas for how to lead a family and how to support their livelihoods and how to pick up the pieces when the whole damn world has fallen apart.
And what about when you can’t?
Well, then you feel like less of a man.
Maybe it’s your sisters who have made you feel like less of a man, or maybe it’s your fellow brothers, but it doesn’t really matter who’s done it, because we’re not pointing fingers here. The only thing that matters here is the what, because it’s only when we can point out the problem and speak freedom over the chains, breaking them for good and forever, that you can begin to find your feet again.
[Tweet “You know what, brother? It’s okay to fall of your white horse.”
I know you’ve been told all your life that crying is just for sissies and that showing who you really are at your greatest depths is just for pussies and that doing what it is you dream of doing is for men who are not really men at all. But the truth is, the best thing you can do is fall off your white horse and land in the mud and dirt and let it cake your face, and stand up, face to face with the people of your world, and say, I need help washing this off. Because then we’re able to help you to your feet. Then we’re able to get your boots unstuck from the mud. Then we’re able to walk you back home.
And if you don’t fall? The mud will still find you, except this time it will be quicksand, and it will close over your heart and your arms and your head, and you will be only a small shell left, writhing in bed, or writhing while you walk, trying to hide what you think is your weakness, because you don’t want the world to see you, since they won’t understand. You will implode, but you will not even show it, because showing your implosion would mean proving you’re less of a man.
The truth is, saviors sometimes need to be saved. Heroes sometimes find themselves in a whole lot of trouble and need a little help. You don’t have to pretend that everything is okay, and you don’t have to push those emotions down into a deep, dark place where they threaten to explode another day at another time in another place.
There is no shame in falling off your white horse. There is no shame in failing. There is no shame in showing your weakness. Because then you can show your real strength.
It’s a skewed world in which we find ourselves, where the definitions for strength and success and courage look so much different than they should. What is true strength but unveiling the dark parts of your heart, the fears you hold, the sadness you carry, the anger that simmers to nearly boiling? What is true success but the recovery from failure, time after time after time? What is true courage but the ability to say This is who I am and I am unashamed and unabashed, and I don’t care what you think?
But these are not the attributes that the world celebrates in its men, and it has you bending, cracking, splitting clean apart with the pressure it takes to “just be a man.”
When I was a girl, I watched the world tell my brother what kind of man he needed to be. I watched it say that he shouldn’t cry, because this was not something men do, and if he ever wanted to be a man, he would have to nip that in the bud, he would have to close himself off to the things that could hurt him, he would have to deny that there was a part of him that fell into sadness, hard. But sadness turned inward is depression, and so it is that you, my brothers, find yourself drowning in the merciless waters of depression, and you can hardly lift your head, and you have walls all up and around, but they don’t work to dam the tide, no matter what, they just close you off from all the people around you, because it’s too risky to let them know this you.
But the thing about closing yourself off to the things that hurt you is that the more you love and the deeper you open yourself to love, the greater risk involved. You will get hurt if you love. It’s just a fact of life, and, sure, you can close yourself off to that but you will, essentially, push away love in its greatest manifestations. And it is not a life worth living if it is a life without love.
So go ahead. Fall off your white horse. My sisters and I will be there to help you back up. We will lend you a hand, and we will think nothing less of you. We will let you fall, and we will dust you off, and we will walk with you along the road to deeper understanding of who you are and who you were made to be.
This is, after all, love.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
What did I know of love before the six of you came into being? Sure, I had your daddy, and that was a love deep and wide and long, but it was a love that did not open fully until there was another kind, this tiny little human being kind of love. We were suddenly united in a shared purpose that was far bigger than the two of us, this raising up of a child. And there was an unexpected development to this kind of love: the six of you began asking for stories, and so we began to tell the stories of our youth, some of them stories we’d never heard of each other, because when you know and love someone, you think you know everything about them, though we had never known each other as kids.
So, yes, it was love that brought your daddy and me together, but it was not the same kind of love that now stretches between the two of us. We are more joined than we ever were before. We are more enduring, more resilient, more pliable at the same time. We have been through the hard places every couple wades through, and we have fought through winds and blinding rain and choking seas to come out on the other side holding hands and matching step, because we were fighting for a deeper purpose. We were fighting for all of you.
We know how important it is for you to have a real and lasting example of the work it takes to love.
So many days your love goes unnoticed. It’s not always easy to see. But as I thought about each of you, as I thought of your looks and your smiles and your words, I could see it so clearly, always hiding underneath.
You show your love by bursting into our room when it’s already time for bed, and you just want to give one more kiss. And even though I don’t like having my reading time interrupted, you’re there beside me, sticking out your lips, and how could I not love this interrupting when you’re 9 years old and you’re still bursting into my room to give me a quick kiss? It won’t happen forever, because one day you will be 19, and it’s this that makes me feel the love full and shifting and overflowing in a heart that seems like, most days, it’s on its last beat, because it is not easy, ever, raising six boys to love each other and Jesus and all people, and it’s especially not easy raising a strong-willed one like you who knows exactly what he wants and won’t stop until he gets it.
You show your love by not even noticing the way you move across the library to sit on the arm of my chair while I’m reading The Never-Ending Story, and you’ll put your head on my head, reading over my shoulder, and I’ll put my hand on your back, because you like your back scratched, and even though there’s a timer on this moment, what I really want is for it to last forever, for it to be frozen in time so that I can go back to it when you’re 16 instead of just 6. This moment won’t last forever, of course, and maybe this is what makes it so sweet. Maybe this is what ushers in the overwhelming love that lingers long after the timer has clanged, telling us it’s time to move on to silent reading and that we’re almost done with this night, even though it will be a while before we get you all put back to bed.
You show your love by coming to sit on my lap while I’m telling a story from my childhood, your favorite one, about your aunt and the dark hallway and the way she stumbled over boxes all the way back to the kitchen during a summer storm when all the cousins were sleeping over. You unconsciously play with my hair while I talk. You always like my hair best of all, and you will brush it against your cheek and over your lips and across your nose, because this is your safe place, this place that smells like the very essence of me, even though my hair hasn’t been washed in a couple of days. And I know that this moment is coming to an end, too fast, because you are only 5, and one day you will be 15, and you won’t want to sit on a mama’s lap. So I sit here as long as I can, drawing out that story the best way I know how, and when you laugh at the predictable part, I feel the love welling up and nearly out my eyes, but I blink the wet away, because I don’t want to explain, yet again, about this emotion that always leaks out my eyes. Happy and sad, all at the same time.
You show your love by coming to give me a kiss at the most inconvenient times, like when I’m doing my ab exercises and I’m huffing and puffing because it really hurts and it’s really hard, and you’ll bend over the baby gate and kiss me on the way up, and even though I’m distracted, even though I just want to get through this moment where my abs are on fire and my breath is nearly gone, I remember that this will not happen forever, either, this kissing in the inconvenient spaces, because one day you’ll be 13 instead of 3, and it won’t be so cool to kiss your mom for no reason at all.
You show your love by sneaking up beside me in the not-paying-attention moments and staring at me for a minute, at what I’m doing, at the things I’m writing, even though you’re a year from reading right now, and you’ll ask your billion questions and be genuinely interested in what I’m doing, and even though I feel irritated, because I just need to finish this one thing right now, I know that you will not always ask your questions, that I am not just on a work deadline but I am on a growing-up deadline, because one day you will be 13 instead of 3, and asking your mom questions about her work won’t be so interesting.
You show your love by the smile that could light a whole room when I walk into it and it’s been a few minutes since you last saw me, and you reach for me, always, and you lay your head on my shoulder, not because you’re tired, but because you’re overwhelmed, like I’m overwhelmed, by the love that spurts out your eyes when you’re so relieved to see the face you love, and you will only stay here, nestled in the curve of my neck, for a moment, because it takes only a moment to be fine again, to be ready to face the rest of your day, ready to look around at all your brothers and join their rough play, and I grieve, because I know that this will not last forever, this picking you up and holding you and carrying you to the places that I think might interest you, because one day you will be 11 instead of 1, and I won’t even be able to carry you, and you probably won’t want to see the places I show you, anyway.
There are so many moments I wish would last forever (though there are also moments I’m glad don’t last forever), and it is the knowing that they will not that has reached down into my love, stretched it and folded it around the six of you. You have brought me to the end of myself, and you have jerked me across the line, so that I stand, before you today, a new person who knows a greater meaning of love, the kind of love that says you first and you best and you always. The kind of love that says a day is worth far more than any year. The kind of love that says a moment might, just might, last forever in the folds of a heart.
That’s where I put all these treasures—in the folds of my heart. We live. We grow older. You grow bigger, truer. I memorize the lines of your face, the curves of your ears, the upward tilt of your noses, the color of your eyes, nearly black, green-blue, all the way black, and blue the color of a deep sea. I hug where I can, kiss where I might, attend where I can manage, and what your faces say to me is that I am worthy of love, that I am loved in the same way I love, or maybe just a little smaller depth, since maybe we don’t really know much of this parental love until we have children of our own, because when we’re a kid we know love as safety and warmth and yellow-colored memories, but when we’re older we know that it’s still safety and warmth and yellow-colored memories, but it’s also transformation and identity and hope and breath and knowledge and life.
You have shown me what it means to love. Thank you, my loves. May you, in return, know the deepest of all loves.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
All my life I have set for myself unreachable standards of perfection. I have eyed my fall-shorts and felt the disappointment needling me, and I have heard that voice of condemn whispering it: Do better.
And I walked it right into my parenting.
Just last night I listened to a talk about how parents should shoot for Bs in our parenting, not As, work toward becoming a good parent, not a great one, how the high standards of parenting can affect us and our children and knock us right out of alignment, and I felt the truth freeze my bones.
Because I know how we can expect too much, always-perfect behavior from these little ones trying to find their way in a so-confusing world, and I know how their mistakes can become our failures if we’re not careful, and I know how suddenly we can have a dog in the fight, a mean one that demands and punishes to break and loses sight of the gift hiding in those mistakes-turned-learning-experiences.
We can grip knuckle-white-tight those unreachable standards for our children because everything they do in their lives reflects on our perfection. And perfectionism, the pursuit of it, can start eating away at us, bit by little bit, when he throws that pencil in frustration because it’s cleanup time and he wasn’t finished with his picture yet, and we’ve told him and told him and told him about these laws of anger, how he shouldn’t throw anything or hurt anyone or destroy anything; when he sneaks downstairs to steal an apple, even though it’s bedtime and we’ve told him and told him and told him this is not allowed; when he brings those cars into his bed from the bathtub, hiding them under pillows, even though we’ve told him and told him and told him it’s not time to play, it’s only time to sleep.
It eats away at us until we explode, because all those mistakes are our parenting failures, because we haven’t done enough to train them or we haven’t tried hard enough to change them or we haven’t been enough to show them.
We can put that pressure on ourselves, on our children, until it bends us all clean in two, and who is the winner in this too-high-standards place?
Our children, walking away from every encounter feeling as if there’s something deep-down wrong with them because we are there, standing over them, shaking fingers at them, always needing more and demanding more and taking more than they can give, even though we know, deep down, it’s more than anyone can give.
Who in this world is perfect every hour of every day? And why do we expect it, knowing the answer?
“It’s not wrong to long for perfection,” says Kay Warren. “It’s just wrong to expect it on earth.”
Perfectionism is like a great black smoke-cloud, choking our joy, hiding play, stealing the adventure that is parenthood, because it covers the beauty of those mistakes that become learning opportunities not just for the children, but for us, too, the parents. When I accept my children for who they are and not who I wish they would be, my joy takes wing in a heart that sees it true: how every mistake is but a chance to teach and connect and love more deeply and surely than before.
How do we learn if we never fail?
So maybe we read that note from a teacher, about a little boy who had to sit out a portion of his recess because he didn’t want to give a lunch-duty teacher his book when she told him he needed to eat his lunch before he read, and, while our face flames, we remember how this experience, this mistake, this talk-back and the later talking through will shape who he becomes, and we don’t hold it over his head as a don’t-ever-cross-again bar of perfection. And maybe he spills that second glass of milk this morning, even though we told him not to play at the table while he’s eating, and we hand him that towel to clean it up for the second time, and we ask “What could you have done differently?” instead of pointing anger-words toward a child-heart, because we remember that here is an opportunity to learn from a happened-again whoops. And maybe we see him hit his little brothers because he’s asked them to leave him alone and they don’t understand, just want to play, and we remember this, too, is a step along the road to becoming if we only choose to correct and teach in love.
We find joy in the imperfection, in the mistakes, in the failures, because we know what they hold within them: the potential for who we become.
This essay is an excerpt from March: We Choose Joy. Adventure. Play, Episode 3 of Family on Purpose. For more information about the Family on Purpose project, visit the project landing page.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
It takes only a look from those evening sky eyes, so much like your daddy’s, before I’m lost in time, lost in space, lost in a world where only you and I exist. It takes only one sweet, joyful smile to send me reeling, end over end, in a twister of tears, for the growing up and the getting older and the never again. It takes only one slobbery kiss to crawl all the way down to my depths and remind me, This is it.
This is it. You are it. You are the last born son.
We knew it from the first moment we knew of you. You grew and you kicked and you formed so perfectly, so beautifully, so wonderfully, and I tried to enjoy every minute of your growing, before I’d even met you, because this was the last time.
It’s funny how a new baby comes into a family by storm, how those first few months feel blurry and unreal, and then, looking back, it’s hard to remember a time when new baby was no baby. I try to see what life was like before you, and it’s impossible to remember what I did with my nights but give you the last goodnight, sleep tight kiss. It’s impossible to remember what I did with my mornings but burrow my face into your belly to make you laugh. It’s impossible to remember afternoons without your curled up form, sleeping soundly in a crib.
Ours is not a complete family without you.
I know your brothers would agree. You are the light of their day, smiling no matter how the world is falling apart around you, calling to them when they pass you on their way to the refrigerator, missing them when they’re away at school. You are sunshine in a hurricane. You are morning song splitting a silent night. You are breath and hope and life and love and miracle.
I spent my birthday last year holding you, just three hours old, against my chest, and I did not think that I would ever put you down, because you were beautiful, and you were here and you were ALIVE and you were last.
And then we brought you home and you fit right in like the whole world had waited on you before it started turning again, in just the right way. Your brothers lived for one little smile, one little contagious laugh, one little hand pat on their leg. You looked around for them when they were gone, because the noise was a constant in your existence, and you did not know, exactly, what to do without it.
It’s hard to explain what you mean to me. But I will try.
That first moment in the hospital, you looked into my eyes, and you reminded me that I mattered, because you were born on the day before my birthday, and I’d always had a complicated relationship with birthdays, because there was always someone missing from mine, but you reminded me that my birthday mattered, that I mattered, and you have no idea what that did for me, my sweet. I was able to unfold in your first year of life in ways I had never done. I was able to dream truer and hope wider. I was able to, finally, live.
You are my last born son. You are the culmination of eight years of childbearing, a whole lifetime of longing. I have given my skin, my eyes, my nose, my mouth, my hair to all of you, some getting more of one than others. Mostly, though, I have given my heart, marveling at who you are and how beautiful this mothering is and what a wonder it is that you are all here, breathing, sleeping, living out loud in the very center of me.
But, you see, there is a sadness you brought with you (if, in the future, you happen to notice this sadness shaking my face, it is nothing to do with who you are). Because everything I watch you do will be the last time.
Your first smile—it was the last first smile I would see from one of my babies. Your first wobbling steps—it was the last first steps I’ll ever see from my own. That 2 a.m. feeding, the splendid silence of it, was the last 2 a.m. feeding I will experience.
It comes with being the last child, but it has nothing to do with who you are. You will see the sadness in my face the first day of kindergarten, but it has nothing to do with who you are. You will see the sadness in my smile when you walk the stage at your fifth-grade graduation ceremony, but it has nothing to do with how you’ve done or who you’ve grown to be. You will see the sadness in my pride the day you drive away from home, but it has nothing to do with who you have been beneath our roof.
You will be the last one who learns to drive a car and the last one who takes Algebra II and the last one who marches in the school band or sings in the choir or lines up on a football field. You will be the last one to go to the senior prom, and you will be the last one to pack your stuff and leave home. And so all along this growing up will be moments of such great pride and wonder, and they will be moments of profound sorrow and pain, too.
Soon, you will learn to wield a spoon, and you will learn to dress yourself, and you will learn to tie your own shoes, and there is a grief in this passing away, because what does a mother do when she has nothing left to do? When she is not needed anymore? When she is just an important person in a life instead of a vital, I-can’t-make-it-without-her person?
Well, she loves. She keeps on loving. She keeps on.
I know we’re a long way from those days of doing for yourself and walking to school on your own and leaving home for good, but here we are, in the blink of an eye, at your first birthday, and it’s the last first birthday I’ll experience with a child of my own. So it is a day of celebration, and it is a day of sadness. This evening I will pack away your clothes, which you outgrew weeks ago but which I’ve been slow to clear out, because it’s the last time. I will mail them to your cousin, and, meanwhile, you will keep growing up, never to stop, no matter how desperately I want you to stop, for just a small moment in time so I can preserve that gummy smile and commit it to memory forever and ever and ever, so I can remember the way you reach for me every time I come into a room because I’m your favorite person in the world, so I can watch you giggle and laugh and do a dance of your own when your brothers turn the music too loud. I don’t want the moments to go away, and, like every moment, they must.
So I guess what I want you to know on your birthday is this: You are perfect just the way you are. I love you with all the love I have in my heart. You are a wondrous ending point to our family with your great joy and wide smile and sweet nature.
Happy birthday, my love. You are mine for now.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
There is a little boy, identical to another, who roams my house burning with curiosity, looking for all the hidden places, touching everything he can possibly find that looks interestingly forbidden. Day after day after day it’s the same story, and my tone often says frustrated and annoyed and angry because he’s really, really good at exploring those cloth diapers just folded, when I step away for two seconds, and he’s really, really good at finding those glass containers when I’ve re-folded and hidden safely away, and he’s really, really good at pulling out yesterday’s food from the trash can while I’ve closed myself in the bathroom for a minute.
This day, my boys have forgotten to close the bathroom doors and the baby gate upstairs, but my attention is divided elsewhere, and before I know it, his twin brother is playing with the cars I got out for them and his older brothers are reading books to each other and he is out of sight upstairs, emptying drawers of their clothes and scarves and hats, and my patience stretches just a little too thin. I speak harshly, and he starts to cry, not so much for the words but the look on my face, because I see it in the mirror, how that look says no love lives here.
A little boy, not even 2, hurt by the one he loves most. Where is the love and honor here?
And I know why it happened, because it’s why it always happens: I need to get something done. And every time he pulls out something he shouldn’t, he takes minutes away from my finishing what I needed to do, so what should have taken five minutes has now taken forty-five, and how does a mama love and honor her children when she is focused on her own agenda, that never-ending to-do list?
Maybe she lets go that list and picks up her boy instead.
So this is what I do. I pick up my little boy, who doesn’t get much more than my “Don’t do that” and my “Stay out of this,” and I hold him, let him rest that sandy head on my shoulder, let him pull back to look me in the eye, and while we’re staring at each other, he smiles and says, “Hi.”
Sometimes it takes only a moment, only a stare, only a word from a baby you held when he was only four pounds, eight ounces, to remind a mama what really matters in all the world. It’s not the taxes I’m trying to file or the kitchen I’m trying to prepare for lunch in the moments when the computer thinks too long or even the schedule I must keep to the second so I can get these children down for naps and start on my full-time work.
All that matters is this, a boy and his mama, a boy honored by his mama, a boy loved by his mama.
It matters what I say and how I speak, and it matters whether my attention shows him honor and love. So how do we do it? How do we meet these needs with four other children and a full-time job and a writing career on the side, with all those leftovers like dinner and laundry and home-cleaning?
Maybe we do it moment by moment, choosing the next right thing.
And maybe the next right thing is putting that laundry load in the wash and honoring them with clean clothes, or maybe it’s letting those piles keep piling so we can sit on a couch with a 22-month-old and look in those eyes and really, really see. So they hear the words we don’t speak. I see you. I honor you. I love you.
This is an excerpt from the Family on Purpose series, Episode 2. For more about the Family on Purpose series, visit the project landing page.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
There’s this story I’ve listened to all my life. Your story. Your story that says I should have been prettier. I should have tried harder. I should have walked thinner. I should have been kinder. I should have been smarter. I shouldn’t have missed that question; it was a silly mistake. I should have been closer to perfectly perfect.
I remember the first time you came to me, after a teacher told me I was needed in the nurse’s office, and as soon as I walked in and saw Nurse Kuchler, she said, “I just need to check your eyes, sweetie. Your mom told us you’ve been having some trouble seeing,” and I felt your flush burn my body like a warm wave of lava had broken from the dormant volcano inside. It would scorch me long after I failed that eye test and found out I would need glasses, which meant I would never, in fact, ever be perfect.
I could have spent the rest of my life avoiding every mirror I came across so I could still believe I was perfect even though I could feel the weight of those corrective lenses indenting the bridge of my nose and worming their way to my heart, too. I could have pretended like I was a completely different person, this was happening to someone else, when the emotions came swinging, because it would have been more convenient to the ones who bore their news. It would have been closer to perfect. I could have ignored the disappointments that stacked up down deep inside that these eyes had failed me.
I would wear glasses. Everyone would know, now, what I had suspected for a while: Perfection could not live in one such as me.
It seems silly now, over something so insignificant as a pair of glasses, but you had already written the story. You. Shame. You had already scrawled your words across the landslide, and this is what your thick black pen said: Because of you.
He left because of you. He won’t come back because of you. There’s no money because of YOU.
It was such a shameful place for an 8-year-old to be, that needing help to see all the colors of the world.
That’s when you started talking to me. That’s when you started lobbing your accusations at me. You are not enough, you said. You must be more, you said. Who you are is nothing, you said.
I tried to argue, but the truth is, I believed it. I believed every word you said. I tried to be better. I starved myself to be thinner. I turned away when I needed a good cry. I folded up in on myself.
I tried to prove my worth in the way I studied and the way I ate and the way I made friends and the way I brushed my hair and the way I put on my makeup and the way I picked out clothes and the way I tried to find a career that came easily and the way I chose to date and the future I planned for myself. I tried to outrun your ever-present being, but there was no running. I know that now. There is only, ever, facing.
Well, I am facing. And what I have to say to you, after all these years, is this:
I am enough.
I am enough.
I AM ENOUGH.
I am enough.
It’s okay that I can’t see two feet in front of my face without corrective lenses. I am enough. It’s okay that sometimes I feel like I’m going to snap in two for the stretching six boys and a job and a home and a husband can do to me. I am enough. It’s okay that I’ll go a little crazy if I don’t get a half second break. I am enough.
It’s okay if I sometimes get frustrated because things aren’t getting shared the way they should be getting shared and I wish someone would just pay attention in this saturated marketplace. I am enough. It’s okay if sometimes I have no idea what to have for dinner. I am enough. It’s okay if sometimes I feel in over my head with this parenting thing, this raising decent human beings thing, this love-without-conditions thing. I am enough.
I have always been enough.
It doesn’t matter if I got a B in my first college creative writing class, or that I quit my dream job for a job much less satisfying and then settled for eight whole miserable years, or that I didn’t have a little girl, or that my body doesn’t look like it did before kids, even though I’m killing myself trying, or that I have a few more gray hairs than I used to have, or that my eyes have constant bags under them now because of kids and work and worry, or that sometimes I wear a Snuggie because it’s the warmest thing around or that sometimes I don’t get a shower every day.
We can all feel it take flame in the backs of our throats, when we think maybe we should have spent a little more time with our family instead of playing on our smartphone. We can feel it rake our faces when someone mentions they’re a stay-at-home parent and we think we should really stop letting work bleed into family time. And we can feel it numbing our legs sometimes when we see someone who looks so much better than we do, someone who is the very definition of stunning and we are so far from it.
We can feel it after we’ve yelled at our kids or said something we shouldn’t or slammed a door that should have stayed open or crumbled the world in a snap of our jaw.
Shame speaks different things to all of us, but those words are always nothing more than fancy lies.
We are enough.
So just move along on your black-path way, shame. Leave us all be. We are enough. We are all enough, no matter where we come from or where we are now or where we’re headed.
We are born enough.
