by Liz Braden (follow)

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The day my mother made sense is the day the rift between us healed.

I used to resent my mother for the mistakes she had made (and there were plenty). Kicking me out of home at the age of 16 for example; how could any mother do that?

Now that I am a mother myself, a lot of her mistakes make sense. You see, she had a hard time when we were growing up, for a lot of the same reasons I'm having a hard time raising Little C. My father was abusive and she left him when I was nine years old. She was a single mother with two pre-adolescent children.


She wasn't coping but she was trying to make the right choices and she was second-guessing herself every step of the way. She had nobody to guide her and nobody to help her, she had to figure it out on her own and she made some wrong decisions.

But she also made plenty of right decisions, and I didn't give her credit for that until I was a mother myself, facing difficult choices, and saw for myself how some decisions leave you damned either way.

The day my mother made sense was the day I sat down to write an article about my life with Little C so far, and I suddenly found myself putting myself in my mother's shoes. This decision was hard and that decision was hard and is that what it felt like to be her when that was happening?

Did she feel the same helplessness I feel now, and did her wrong choices seem right at the time like mine did? How would I feel if Little C hated me for choices I made in the same way I hated my own mother for the choices she had made?

The day my mother made sense, I went in to hug her and say thank you. She was surprised and she didn't understand at first, so I explained the epiphany I'd had and that I now understood how it had been for her because I'm a mother now and I get it.

The day my mother made sense is the day the rift between us healed. She wasn't perfect, she made mistakes, but she never gave up and she never walked away. Like me, she was doing her best.

And I love her for it.

Read To My Friends Who Were Mothers Before Me...
Read To My Mum Friends... Thank You
Read Switching Roles: Parenting Your Parents
Read How A Break In Taught Me About What Matters Most

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