A Season of Grief and Light

Parenthood is clarifying. There’s a reason why it’s consider one of those “big moments” in life when you decide to become a parent. It’s because you’re making a decision to break off a piece of your heart and hand it to someone else. I don’t consider the moment the stick showed two pink lines the moment that I entered motherhood. No. The moment I entered motherhood was the day that I made the hard decision to put the future and innocence of my son above the hopes of my own unrealistic dreams.

I grieved for Sam. I grieved for him the second I found out the my perfect, beautiful boy would need multiple surgeries to live. I grieved for him when he was born. I grieved for him when they took him from me to take him into surgery before I even had the chance to get out my hospital bed. I grieved for him as he struggled and fought to recover, covered in scars and bruises that broke my heart. I grieved for him as we anxiously awaited the day to take him home. I grieved that I missed the first month and a half of his life.

Then, he came home. That beautiful baby boy came home and we became a family reunited. But, I couldn’t shake the grief. There was another little one. One that had lay forgotten and abandoned for years and years knocking at the door of my heart. And, I knew I wasn’t done grieving yet.

I spent the better half of two decades walking away from this little one. Her voice was quiet at the best of times. A little whisper of “Hey, look at me” following me. I’d hear it passing by when I’d be nursing a new emotional injury or when I felt like I finally accomplished something. And, now, with Sam here, I made another decision: to turn around and look at this little one.

This little one is me. Me as a little girl. A little broken, bruised, and abandoned piece of my soul. She is another little one, who like my son, got scars too soon. Got bruised too soon. But, her scars were intentional. Her bruises were on purpose. This little one never got to be a little one.

It’s easy to live life when you think to yourself, “I’m worthless and nothing so I’ll be nothing”. It’s easy to live that life. A life where why bother to care when it doesn’t matter anyway. You can go about your way not caring, not making points, not speaking up, not living at all.

But, when you embark on a journey, a “self-love” extraordinaire journey, you can’t live that life anymore. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t believe you are nothing and love yourself. To love yourself, you have acknowledge that you are worthy of love and deserving of love. To love yourself, you have to acknowledge that you exist and that you deserve to exist. You cannot be nothing.

And, so I turn to the little one that has been whispering in my ear “Hey, look at me” for two decades. I hang my head knowing that I’m as much at fault of abandoning her as the others who swore unconditional love and then told her she was nothing. I know that it’s time to pay my dues and to mourn that little one: the punches she (literally) had to roll with, the scars she had to bear, the fear she faced when she was left all alone.

This is a new season of my life and not because I’m a new mother. There’s another newness, one which I’ve never allowed myself before. A newness of healing and of existing. A season of waking up and saying “Hey, look at me” to the world, even if it comes out shaking. This season scares me. This season requires every ounce of grit I have. This is a season of grace, of courage, and of light. And though I face it unsteady and shaking, there’s that little piece of my soul, that little forgotten girl, gently nudging me forward.

So, hey, look at me.