We were a team.
I was a young mother, and I did not always know what I was doing.
I stumbled. I worried. I carried pain I did not yet know how to name.
But the three of us became a team.
We grew together. We laughed together. We survived hard seasons together. And somewhere along the way, they became two of my greatest teachers.
“It’s okay to not be okay.”
My daughter once said something to me during a difficult season that I have never forgotten:
It’s okay to not be okay.
Simple words. But they gave me permission to stop pretending. They reminded me that honesty is not weakness.
Sometimes healing begins the moment we stop performing strength.
“You’re good, Mom.”
When my son was about five years old, he saw me speaking about myself from a place of sadness.
He looked at me and said, “Mom, you’re okay. Look, you have ten fingers, right?”
I said yes.
“And you have ten toes, right?”
I said yes.
Then he smiled and said, “See, Mom? You’re good.”
He saw me through love, not pain. And sometimes love sees more clearly than we do.
This is for you.
Thank you for giving me space to write.
Thank you for listening to my poems.
Thank you for loving me while I was still learning how to love myself.
You were never the reason I had to heal. You were the reason I kept choosing to.
This is for you.