The Rough Patches

Today was hard. I know there are going to be hard days. I have been through much worse.

But how do you tell your kids the same thing? How do you watch them go through things that feel the same but are different? I can’t say I have been there, even though I have, but in a different way. I am not my mother in a lot of ways, but I am still a mother, and she is still a teenager with hormones and drama and anxiety and pressure that she puts on herself. And all the pressures that society puts on our kids.

The world around us is shit, but I am in a place of privilege with age, and she is still navigating parts that seem unfair and unbalanced, and the weight of the world is on her, and there is a hole inside her that I can’t fill for her.