Is there anything more terrifying than a love this big?
Is there anything more terrifying than carving out a piece of your own heart to share with the world?
A piece of your heart that will grow and beat outside of the confines and control that your body once had. A piece that can break and ache and run. A piece that can be crushed, bruised, swayed or lost altogether.
Sharing a piece of your heart, with the intention of letting it go, letting it be what it may… There is no greater show of love or bravery.
This glorious little piece of me that I nurtured into being is my responsibility – for now – but he isn’t me. And he isn’t mine.
He has his own journeys. His own ideas and desires and worries and mistakes. He has his own heartbreaks and his own demise.
That is the burden of parenthood.
To feel those daggers hitting that perfect little piece of your heart. Feeling the excruciation of life’s backhand 100 times harder than if you had felt it against your own flesh instead of his. Busting into a thousand pieces of agony for your love, but knowing you can’t take the pain away. Because it’s not for you. None of his lessons are.
Those lessons are his gift to you. The love and agony that comes with sharing him have saturated your life with a purpose that can’t be explained to those that don’t know it. And keeping to your lane, resisting the urge to jump into the deep end to drag him to shore… That is your gift to him, for the exact same reasons.
It truly feels like the meaning of life, and it is always worth it.
Mommy’s Inside Voice is a biweekly column by Amie Jay, a local mother of three.
