Dearest one,

You are doing a good job.

I know this is hard.

I know this is hard.

I know.

I’m sorry.

*

I’m sorry you’re in pain right now.

I’m sorry it feels like your life has been ripped apart, asunder, in a million different pieces right now with none that are yours.

I’m sorry.

It will get better.

It will get better.

I promise.

*

Give yourself what you need.

You are the non-renewable resource here.

Give yourself time out.

Give yourself space to breathe and think and take a moment or twelve.

Give yourself the gift of those things you loved before the great earthquake came.

Ask for what you need. Ask for it again and again.

Ask for it from different people.

Find the support you need.

You need it.

You deserve it.

It will make it better.

*

There is not one right way to do this.

Not one way that will grade you as the perfect mother.

Not one way that will cure all the ills in this world.

And that’s okay my darlingheart.

That’s okay.

Please don’t grade yourself on those books.

*

Fuck the ideologies.

Fuck the experts.

Fuck the how to do it rights.

Fuck it all.

Cherish you and your truth and your child and your family

and that particular constellation of cells that make your universe up.

You’re the expert here.

You’re the one that has the authority and the power and the truth and the right

to make a life that is good and kind to your spirit and your families.

You can do it.

I trust in you.

You’ve got this.

*

Please don’t grade yourself on what mothering looks like on others.

You can only see the outer of their lives, not the inner.

You are important. You are needed. You are good and you are right.

You are a mother.

A wonderful mother.

And that’s enough.

It’s going to be enough.

*

You’re going to keep learning of course.

It’ll happen without you even pushing and straining.

It’ll happen because that’s how it always happens with life.

You’ll find out what you need when you need it.

You’ll find out because when you need an answer when you need it.

You don’t need to know everything before it’s begun.

*

Fuck it.

Burn the books.

Give yourself what you need.

Ignore how everyone else is doing it.

Follow only the simple song in your own heart,

the lightness in your own step,

the path that is calling you.

You deserve goodness.

You deserve to thrive.

You are mother.

*

All my love,
Always and all ways,
the stumbling, humbled, haemerroid-ridden, puking, but slowly getting it,