You Are My BEST Mommy!

I try to give T affirmations every night. It's the one therapeutic parenting technique I'm pretty good at.

"You are a very good boy."

Or, "You're a great kid!"

Or, "You are my best heart." I stole that one from him.

Last night I said, "You are my best boy."

"You are my best mommy," he whispered back.

Words like those make me cringe inside.

"What about your mommy in Ethiopia?" I think. "How can I be your best mommy when I am your Plan B? When you have a mommy in Ethiopia (we think) who loves you and cared for you and did the best she could for you and screamed when they took you away?

"I am the mommy you got stuck with, not the mommy who gave you life and who you loved with all your heart for your first four years, but you don't think much about now because when you do it makes you sad and angry -- and sad and angry makes you scared and scared means you might not survive -- so you just pretend now that you don't care about her.

"What about that mommy? How can you say that I'm your best mommy when I know there's another mommy out there who misses you Every Single Day?"

Being an adoptive mom is hard. "You are my best mommy," should make a mother's heart soar, but I can't hear it without thinking about the mommy who misses her best boy. And who would wonder, "What about me?" if she knew T was whispering those words into my ear.


Comments

  1. Kristen [Teamfuest]June 5, 2013 at 7:32 AM

    so hard :(

    ReplyDelete
  2. KJune 6, 2013 at 10:51 AM

    All of this is so freaking hard and layered and the books just don't give all of the answers. *sigh*

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnnaJJune 8, 2013 at 6:29 AM

    Yes, terribly hard. In his heart though, he meant it in context of a 7 year old who is living with a mama here and now. You hear it in the global context of there being another mama, across the world. You hear it with grief tempered with joy. You hear it with questions of ethics and history and all of the story as you know it. Lying in bed with his little 7 year old self next to you...you are his best mama in the here and now, and that is okay. That is good that he can be safe and content and open in his love for you. Please be kind to yourself.

    ReplyDelete

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