Showing UP for Sophia: And Like That, She's Gone

I have work to do, but I can’t stop crying. I have to get it out first. I have to be with this. I have to feel it all. Even when my breath tightens, even when my legs can’t stop shaking, even when I have to pause typing for every word to cry. I have to understand why I feel like such a failure. I have to know to go forward. Deep down I already know what it is, I’ve just never named it. Only shamed and blamed it in others.

This is my mid-life crisis. This is where I see all of my shit. Where I face my shadows, the darker parts of myself that I don’t want you to know. So why am I telling you now? Because I’m done hiding.

Showing UP for Sophia: Good Thing

I knew next to nothing about the fathers of my children. All three of them. Third times the charm? In the sense that I‘m certain I’ll never have another baby with a man I barely know? Absolutely. Not only because I’m 44, but because I’m over the concept that I need to be with the father to be there for our child. We are. We will be. I’m trusting that John and I will show up for Sophia in the ways she needs, since we weren’t showing up for each other, which was unfair to us all.

I’ve been here before. I know what usually happens... I get the kid and he and I hate each other, forever. As if that tactic worked with my first two children who have since confessed that I regularly crossed their boundaries by sharing too much, and rarely got consent from their fathers for making choices that concerned our children. Not this time.

Mom in Me: My Best Friend & Biggest Bully

I wasn’t a good mother. I wanted to be. I tried to be. But I only knew as much as I learned, and what I learned wasn’t good.

My mother screamed, and hit, and hurt everyone in our home. Especially me. I was singled out for being the only girl. Given rules and expectations that didn’t apply to my brothers. Years later, I’d learn why.