Mom vs mother.

It has been minutes since my last post. I am swirling. My brain is backpedaling and I am judging myself. Take it back. Erase. Edit. Rewrite the whole damn thing. Stop writing. Keep it inside. Why did you say that? Why. Just why. What about this?

This is what happens when you do not write for months. The first thing that pops into your mind ends up on the page.

In August I went to visit my daughter. In the last post I questioned whether I would ever be a mother? I am a mom, but I have never been a mother. A mother earns her name and a mom is just a given title. I had never felt like either one until that visit in August. It was the best visit I have ever had and I felt welcomed and connected more so than ever before. I didn’t feel like I was ashamed of myself and that I should hide who I was. This was in part by my daughter introducing me to numerous people as her mom. The first time she did it I thought it was by accident. I fumbled. I paused. I savored the idea of being seen as her mom. My heart grew. I thought it was an accident until she kept doing it, multiple times. Each time she introduced me her enthusiasm grew more and more. With that my heart grew so big I could feel it in my throat. She had called me mama as a baby, but I am sure those were just sounds she was making. I dont know if she knew how important that was to me, but I felt on that day I finally became a mom. This is not to be confused with a mother, because I am still lost on whether I will ever be that.

Even though mom is just a given title, I felt such the opposite of that for so long that hearing it from her mouth really made it true.

I savored this day and I continue to. I have told so many people the story about that day. I wanted to tell my daughter how important that day was to me, but as we have no communication that was not possible.

Until now. She will read this and now she will know that on that day when she introduced me to the world, I finally became a mom.