A Look Inside My Heart by Leia Shaw

***In honor of Mother’s Day (a little late). Happy Mother’s Day!

I’ve always been a mother at heart. As a child, I treated my baby dolls as if they were real. I loved to babysit and would smile at children in groceries stores. And kids have always loved me.

I used to want seven children like the Von Trapps, from The Sound of Music. I was in love with the idea of having a large family with lots of kids, lots of activities and chaos. Ah, the misguided ideals of youth.

When M came along 4.5 years ago, he redefined my version of motherhood. At 1.5, he came to our home as a foster child, having already been through what most adults couldn’t dream of. At that time, M was a mystery to me. He had his own personality, his own story we didn’t know much about, and his own emotional turmoil we couldn’t comprehend. We loved him, yes, but we didn’t know him.

In reflecting back on my first few months of being a new mother, I can now see what a hard transition it was for me, for all of us. Not at all like typical mothers who have a flood of warmth for the newborn that looks like them and is dependent on them for love and affection. In fact, my child hated me in ways I couldn’t understand for the first six months of our life together.

Friends and family asked m how I liked motherhood and if it was everything I dreamed it would be. It took all I had to smile and say “yes, it’s great” when inside I felt like collapsing in a pile of tears. M was nothing like what we thought parenting would be. And I felt like a huge failure. Like I had been preparing my whole life for something that, as it turned out, I sucked at. I sucked at being a mom.

After we figured out that M had legitimate special needs, not caused by what I thought was our crappy parenting, I began to relax a little. I looked at myself differently. I saw that I was actually a very patient and loving mother, even though I didn’t feel like it. I didn’t suck at this mothering thing, I had been dealt a hand I was not prepared for. I had a tough kid. Who came from an even tougher circumstance. And I don’t think M would have fared any better in another home, as I had previously thought. He ended up right where he’s supposed to be.

If my daughter had come first instead of M, I would still have that dream of seven children. Parenting D is my idyllic version of motherhood. She is normal and healthy. She is loving and well-adjusted. She is calm and easy-going. She is everything I thought having a baby would be. If she came first, I would probably be begging my husband to adopt another. My whole outlook on being a mother would have been different.

But that’s not what was meant to happen. I am happy and thankful for both my children. Parenting D has been marvelous and magical; full of joy and cuddles. Parenting M has been full of challenges. But he’s taught me more lessons than I ever knew I needed to learn. He taught me about what’s really important in life. He taught me grace, forgiveness, selflessness, patience, unconditional love, and he brought out an inner strength in me I didn’t know was there. I’ve matured and gained wisdom beyond my years because of him.

Having to fight so hard for his love and trust has bound us together indefinitely.

He will always be my mystery.

But he is also my heart.

He is the reason I am a mother.

(stock photo, not M)

Filed under: romance