You are Loved

To my precious daughters,

One day you will leave me and venture to find yourselves – to create a life of your own – and if you go in the confidence of knowing you are treasured, wanted and cherished, you will go far.

Each day I aim to show you how valued you are. I get it wrong; you push me to the limits of myself; sometimes I yell or moan about insignificant things. Then there are moments when I catch myself bubbling over with the intensity of my love for you and I want to stop time. Because you are growing up too quickly for me to take it all in.

It’s the great parenting paradox: love you too much to articulate while simultaneously pushing me to the point of anger I didn’t know I possessed, until I had children.

I never intended on having three children. In truth, there was a stage in my adult life when I was so content I wasn’t sure I wanted to interrupt my blissful independence with dependents. Your father and I travelled the world on a whim, went out for dinner a few times a week and I used to read. Yes, actual adult books – not just the picture ones.

And yet, as each one of you has come along, my capacity to love has enlarged, my selfish needs seemingly less important. I’m still me, I am just made better by your presence in my world.

For so long I have questioned what I should be doing with my life, feeling like I have never quite got there; never lived up to my true potential. But now I know all paths have led me here, to you. Being your mother takes all of me – mind, body, spirit – and I have to tap into resources I didn’t know I possessed. Nothing has ever stretched me like this. Nothing has ever been as satisfying. Watching you become people in your own right, knowing I have had some part to play, is a privilege and a joy.

When you are asked the inevitable questions of seeming worth – What do you do? Where are you from? What school did you go to? What do you want to do? – I hope you will have a deep-rooted confidence in your heart which reassures you these things are really of little significance. Because what truly matters is that you are loved. Always and forever.

Love,
Mum