Mothers, Your Daughters are Waiting
Dedicated to all Mothers with the excruciating and important task of freeing your daughters
“Go and be who God created you to be and always know that I love you! -Mom”
It happened on Facebook and, on the surface, it might not have read to be much more than a sweet comment from someone’s Mother. For me, that one sentence shifted something deep inside me. I knew what it really meant and I knew in that moment of reading it that things would starting changing in my life.
I cried for a long time in the way you cry when separating from someone you love and you know the relationship will never be the same again. I cried deep sobs of love and gratitude that I finally had her blessing to be me, to become who I was put on this planet to become. In her way she freed me to go and do what I am here to do even if she doesn’t understand it, or approve, and even if it means our relationship changes.
I may never know what it’s like to be a parent and to be faced with, what I can only imagine is, the heart-wrenching decision to truly let go and release your child into the world.
As Maya Angelou says, that is true love.
The permission she gave me severed a cord that attached the two of us in an unhealthy way. Rather than jumping both feet fully in to my life, I was keeping one foot in, playing it safe, in part, because that was the repeated message I received from her growing up. I don't blame her. It's a very common and rational message to give your children, but it can keep them from reaching their full potential in adulthood.
There were other reasons I was holding myself back but until I received those words from her, I didn’t even realize how much I had been doing it and for whom. I had been afraid to lose her love and approval and afraid of becoming estranged if I stepped fully into myself as a very different woman.
She’ll always be a part of me. She made me and we have a bond only mothers and children understand. She was the first love of my life and my first heartbreak. We were inseparable until I became a teenager. She holds a big piece of my heart and I hers. No matter what kind of wounding we’ve inflicted on each other over the years, the mother/daughter bond is permanent and irreplaceable.
Thank you Mom, for fully releasing me. I felt the significance for us both in those few words. I know it must have been hard. Please know that your blessing was the best gift and highest form of love you could have ever given me. I feel free.