To Scarlet on your 2nd Birthday

Dear Beautiful Scarlet on Your Second Birthday,
I was working on some very simple, but life changing, ideas while I was pregnant with you.  I felt like you were teaching me to just accept what IS instead of longing for some idealist dream I had mapped out in my head.  Your birth certainly threw my birth plan right out the window.  Every single detail of it.  Every one.  We took you home, thrown into the chaos of new titles and roles we knew nothing about.  I fought against it so often.  I hadn't learned, after all.  It was supposed to be the bliss I had felt caring for other people's children but it wasn't.  I couldn't accept that this new reality was different, but still good.  I told myself I was a bad mother, and then I repeated it every day.

Your brother's diagnoses and death shook me to the core, it ripped control from my hands violently.  I could see that I was the only one in the world who knew how to mother Orion, and so I was the only one who knew how to mother you.  I stopped telling myself I was a bad mother so often, I enjoyed the role, felt blessed to know you.  Felt privileged to receive every smile and twinkle of laughter you offered me.  The depth of my sorrow was matched by the depth of my gratitude and joy in you.  I look back on those months fondly, despite it being the time of my most profound loss and grief.

When I saw the tiny lines indicating your sister was on her way I felt terror.  Actual blood chilling terror.  I put you in the car and we drove back roads through the woods, holding this secret in my heart.  I bought you a shirt that said "Best Sister Ever".  I let you break the news to your father that way.  I faked joy for a long, long time.  I gave you less and less, and told myself I was a bad mother again because I felt fear where there should be joy.  Should be.  That awful phrase haunting our lives again, telling me it wasn't good enough, that I wasn't good enough.  Depression descended.  And we are still adjusting to all of our new roles with little Iris changing the family dynamics and demanding space of her own in our hearts and demanding so much of our time.

I will tell you that I have made mistakes as your mother.  There have been moments I've failed you.  Moments I failed myself.  But you are such a miracle, always ready to forgive and try again.  Hugs and kisses and "I'm sorry" still seem to repair these little hurts.  Your light cannot be dimmed, your joy is contagious, your curiosity and affection are enlightening.  You deserve a good mother.

So my gift to you, on your 2nd birthday is this: I promise to tell myself that I am a bad mother less often.  Because I can't be a good mother if I'm always insisting that I'm not.  Maybe it doesn't sound like much, maybe you think I should just promise to be a better mother.  But one day you will understand that it would never work if I was still telling myself how bad I was at it.  I will strive to be my very best for you, and I think that requires me deleting the phrase "I am a bad mother" from my inner dialogue.  You deserve the time and attention that it takes up.  You deserve the joy that it steals.  You deserve a mama who isn't focused on the broken pieces, but on the amazing mosaic our family has created together.  You deserve me.  Whole.

Love,
Mama