Dear Meliss,

Each afternoon when you pick O up from school you ask him about his day. You ask him what he did, sure, but mostly you wait to ask the central question “O, tell me, how did you bring light and love to school today?”. And inevitably he tells you how he shared something in the castle, helped a friend who got hurt, did his work when asked. You don’t ask for more than that, you don’t ask the world of him, only that he make the world a little brighter. We celebrate the small victories together

It is enough.

I wonder mamma…what if that was all you asked of yourself at the end of the day? Did you bring hope and peace to your home? A little bit of light? Make a memory? Did you notice something beautiful? Teach them how to see it? Did you show them grace? Teach them how to receive it?

Or did you only notice what you didn’t do?

I know you aren’t the mamma that you had hoped to be. But I gotta tell you, you probably aren’t as bad as you think you are either. And other mammas probably aren’t as great as you think they are. You need to ease up woman. Every time you let defeat win, you teach your children that you are a liar, that the ‘Overcomer’ is not living in you.

I know you are tired. It has been a week hasn’t it? This motherhood thing is so much more than you ever thought it would be. “More” in every. single. way. More energy than you thought you had. More taxing than you thought possible. More rewarding than anything else you have ever done..

You know those moments? When you suddenly feel like you are having an out-of-body experience? When the world slows in love and you sit back and watch your own life and it is MORE than you thought it could be. When Joel is in the midst with the kids. Or when they both crawl quietly in your lap. When you breathe deep of their hair and read books together and the world turns into a rose-coloured television ad? Those moments happen because you are moving slow enough to let it. They happen because you allow the children time to do it. They happen because your expectations are quiet. It happens because they are the moments of Love and Light, not pressure and expectation.

Take it easy will you?
With love from,

Your much wiser self

PS: Also, whatever you do…DO NOT forget that moment this week after you and the kids spent some time with the new beast on the deck and he shed his winter coat all over you. You said to the kids “we will have to change when we go in! Sam covered us in hair”. Your boy? Responded “YES…lets get naked just how I like it”. Or when the little girl, shouted from the basement in her ‘one of a kind accent’ that most cannot understand. But that YOU, YOU, understand every utterance she makes.