Thought Monsters

The picture of perfection.  I am not a perfectionist. For the most part I am Happy with being me.  But there are times when I just wish I could waive a magic wand and make life simple for my daughter.  Wish I could just tell her that I can make everything perfect and that all will be well.  She is smart, funny, sweet and very caring but has this horrible thought Monster that eats away at her brain.

My daughter deserves the best, deserves perfection.  But what I am trying to teach her I am also learning myself.  "Best"  means so many different things, and there is nothing perfect, all we can do is take one step at a time.  Take the moments as they come, to try to see the sunlight through the cloudy glasses this Monster has decided to share with her.

Right now, moments to her don't matter because more often than not she trapped in this cycle, this circle that won't let her free.  My hope for my daughter is that one day she will see just exactly how amazing she is.  That she is not her thoughts and that her thoughts do not dictate her life.  Too explain something so deep to someone so young is truly a hard bridge to get across.  I want to pull her, push her, coach her, sometimes I just want to scream! I have to remember to take a moment, a minute, to see the path she is walking is a not a path she chosen.  She is fighting to get past it, to get through it, to figure it out. 

As a mommy I don't want to see my baby hurt, I don't want to see her cry.  But as her mommy I realize that for my daughter to become who she is meant to be there has to be hurt, there has to be tears.  There is no perfection, there is no fixing every bump in the road.  Everyone has a path, a journey, a life filled with moments to fight their way through.

I hope that I can be the Mom who gives her kids strength and courage, to know this is their life and their moments and that to laugh, to cry, to hurt, is okay.  I hope I can be the Mom who instills in her children's hearts that it is okay to not be perfect and to not have perfect expectations of life. When they are running full force and get knocked over, I want them to be able to stand up and brush themselves off and start again.  How will they learn this if I just try to make everything perfect?  If I run before them camouflaging life, putting up Taylor Swift posters over every "monster" that dares peak through, what version of life will they have in their minds?   Do I want them to believe that there only rainbows and no storms?

It has become more and more clear to me that I am here to help my daughter, to ensure that she makes it with her head held high, that when all is said and done she can close her eyes and be proud of who she is. The moments where she thinks she can't make it, its my job to hold out my hand and help her up, its not my job is not to sugar coat and paint roses in front of her.  Life is what is, Life is what you make it, your Life is what you build. My job is to raise a strong courageous woman who has conquered and is conquering something so big.  I want my daughter to be proud of the life that she builds.

These three little kids that I look at everyday are teaching me that these are not my moments but their moments, these are their lives and their moments that will build them and shape them into the next generations.  I hope that I can remember this one important lesson: my job as a mother is not perfection.  Being a mother means being there to kiss the scraped knee and remind them just because they fell off their bike doesn't mean they should stop riding.