From The Womb

Doesn’t healing sometimes feel like that portrait you’re pacing past; there, like art, reminding you how far you made it. That it’s OK to be good because you were always good.

Isn’t healing happening in that moment as a parent, when your whole body swells with love. You wonder, “Did she feel this for me?” Sometimes, probably. A strike of guilt to question but a redirect to give what you craved.

I don’t want my son to have his own hallway of portraits. But I know he will. Because childhood and young adulthood are full of cobblestone roads. So misshapen and bumpy. I can only do so much protecting fears without projecting my own.

So I will remind him like I do that little girl in the portrait of my hallways: he is good and he is worthy. The truest truth born from the womb.