I'm not just parenting them - I'm meeting myself.

No one told me that motherhood would be one of the most confronting mirrors I’d ever stand in front of.

I thought I was here to guide, protect, teach. And I am. But what I didn’t expect was how much they would teach me - not just about love or patience, but about the parts of me I had buried deep down and tried to forget.

It happens in the smallest moments.

When my child hesitates before asking a question, challenging my boundary or having big emotions,, like they’re afraid it might be “too much.” I feel it in my chest; the familiarity. I used to do that, too.

When they light up, completely themselves, loud and silly and soft and expressive, and I feel a hesitancy in myself, for them; because I remember being worried about being "too bold”. 

When they cry openly, or ask to be held, or say “I don’t like that” and I pause, reminded that I didn’t know I could say those things when I was little. That it was okay to have needs. That someone would listen.

These aren’t just parenting moments. These are invitations.

Invitations to meet the younger version of myself I’ve spent so long ignoring. The one who questioned herself often; wondering if she was being “too loud”, “too bold”...”too much.” My childhood was one of many, riddled with unacheivable societal expectations of children being seen, not heard. And while I navigated and found a balance for myself, I wish for younger me, I could've been ALL of me.

And now here I am; a grown woman, a mum, raising children who deserve to take up space. Children who are allowed to feel, to speak, to set boundaries.

Children who trust that they can be fully seen and still fully loved.

Sometimes it aches - Sometimes it heals. Most of the time, it does both.

I used to think I was here to raise them into whole, emotionally safe little humans. But the truth is, I’m doing that for myself, too.

We’re growing up together. And I’m realizing that I was never too much... just a child with big feelings in a world that didn’t know how to hold them

- k