It looks different for all of us. Maybe it’s a car wreck, a fall down the stairs, or a diagnosis we weren’t expecting. It’s that moment when we lose our mom innocence. When all the magic and joy of so many of those fun firsts like smiles and steps are now accompanied by the reality that bad and sad things will happen to our children.
And in that moment, our mom hearts break. They break with the knowledge that we can’t protect them from everything. That people and things will, at some point, harm them. And that we, as the people who love them the most in the world, will fail them from time to time.
And our hearts break because this feeling that knocks the wind out of our sails, that keeps us up at night, that turns our stomachs in knots, we realize that this is not a one off. Because we know that being a mom and loving little people this damn much means our hearts will break again. Our kids will fall. They will fail. They will have their precious hearts broken by friends and love interests.
And each and every time our momma hearts will break. They will break and heal. And rebreak again. And heal again.
But, here is what I keep reminding myself as a new mom who is crossing this threshold for the first time. With each break we find new strength that we didn’t know we had. We toughen up and find ourselves to be more resourceful and more resilient than ever before. And we learn to soak up those smiles and laughs and childhood wonder for the treasures they truly are to us. And hopefully, we learn that when it seems like there is nothing else we can do, sometimes simply loving them through it is enough.