No one else will know the strength of my love for you. After all, you are the only one who knows what my hearts sounds like from the inside.
I saw this quote the other day and it really struck a chord in me. There is something that shifts in you when you have a child. A fierce love fire flames inside you with the message: Love this child with every fiber of your being. Love is just there. For a short time, there are 2 souls contained in one body. That flow of love and connection does not diminish upon birth but strengthens as the years go by. For me, I had a bit of a head start getting to know Mina. Her little spirit would visit me about half a dozen times in dreams for 3 years before she decided it was time to “formally” enter to the world. I learned to love her when she was just a dream.
What I didn’t know was that I could have that same love for another person’s child. Children have a way of weaving themselves into your heart and become embroidered on your soul. Two nights this week, I made time to cuddle and sleep with Mina and Zola. Each is different in the way they sleep, embrace, and snuggle. One morning I woke to Zola’s arm wrapped around my neck, forehead to forehead, noses almost touching. The next morning, Mina had wrapped her whole body around my back, making sure I wasn’t going anywhere. On occasion, Allegra claims me as her own and we fall asleep hugging, her head on my chest. Taking time to sleep with your children is not just about bonding, but about developing trust. When there is trust, a deeper love grows: This person can keep me safe.
Even between the girls, there is this love that makes it hard for them to let go of each other and say good-bye. There are days when Mina gets picked up by her dad or the girls get picked up by their mom, leaving the other(s) behind. Group hugs, kisses, tackle hugs, “don’t go’s” dominate pick up times. They have a great need to be with each other all the time.
Here I am, talking about love, my girls, and family and yet, I am still dealing with the knowledge that there are people out there who have been told that I hate my child. That I am an “unfit mother, lazy, unclean, and wants nothing to do with” my own child. A stranger, out of concern for Mina asked me a question that haunts me: Do you hug your child? Knowing Mina through other avenue’s, he and his family had grown to care for Mina and he came to talk to me. Hearing depictions of me as a mother pained him and he was prepared to adopt Mina from me if I “didn’t want her” as had been claimed.
I felt as if someone had taken a knife to my soul. I was shocked, saddened, and angry that my love for my child had been distorted in such a way that other’s believed such horrible things. It’s been months since first hearing about this and I am still dealing with it. Intellectually, I can easily compartmentalize it and release it. Emotionally, it is a whole other story. There is a visceral reaction that cannot be put into words about how deep of a wound those words caused. It is out there, in the universe that I hate my child. I can’t get them back, I can’t neutralize them, and I can’t let go of the notion that they were used to inflict pain, on me…deliberately. What if my child heard those things? Would she doubt me? Would she doubt my love for her?
Most days, I am able to process and let it go. But, taking time to snuggle, watching the girls sleep, smiling as I remember that they still wake up the same way they did as babies, I am filled with such love and then such sadness that people would doubt that that love was real.