Her Journals

I was young when I first came across the basket full of journals. I poked around a bit, wondering what they were.

Then my mom walked in, saw what I had found, and came and put the books away, gently letting me know they weren't for me.

Years later, I was searching for something in an old bookshelf with drawers at the bottom. The drawer was a little stuck, so I had to pull hard and jiggle it a bit to open it. Inside were those same journals. My mom walked in, probably alerted by my noisy effort to open the drawer, and reminded me that they weren't for me.

I was old enough this time that she explained that they were her journals from years ago, and one day, she would let me read them - but there were things in there that I wasn't old enough to read yet. And she wanted to read them with me, so she could explain some things.

It wasn't long before my nosey teenaged self snuck back to that bookshelf, looking for the journals.

But they were gone. My mom knew me better than I had thought.

It was years later that I would stumble upon the journals again. This time, I was eighteen.

Old enough, I imagine, to finally read them.

But this time, my mom wouldn't be walking in on me.

This time, I found the journals as I packed up our house.

Just weeks after she had passed away. 

A year passed before I could crack open one of those journals.

This time, I searched through them, looking for a specific date.

I was born in September 1985, so I wanted a journal that started in January 1985.

I was pregnant with my first child, and I did not have a parent to talk with about any of it. But I had access to her words and thoughts from her own pregnancy with me.

I read entries about her and my father's relationship, how she spent her downtime, and what she did throughout the week. Eventually, I read about when she realized she might be pregnant. When she finally took the pregnancy test. How she felt. How she told my father.

I'd be lying to you if I said the journal was easy to read.

You see, my mother's story isn't an easy one.

I wasn't a planned pregnancy.

My parents were not married.

In fact, by the time my mom needed to tell my dad that she was pregnant, they weren't even together anymore.

And the life she was living when she got pregnant with me wasn't necessarily the type of life you'd recommend someone should bring a child into. In fact, most of her family told her definitively that she should not have me.

And yet, there we were. Before I was even born, my mother's story and the very beginning of mine were intertwined, haphazardly written in a book that I was left to read alone.

I would be remiss if, before I dove into telling parts of my story, I did not first honor my mother and her story.

Because her story is where my story begins.

As I have had to read her journals alone, without her here to explain things the way she had hoped to, I am also sharing my version of my story, which at one point was our story: without her.

It wasn't until a few years ago, as I started sharing my story more openly, that I realized that some people's reaction to my story was to judge my mother. But none of them had heard her story.

My mother was almost thirty when she had me. She had lived quite a life before she became a mother. She was living quite a life when she learned she would be a mother! She did not grow up Christian. She grew up in a broken home with what I would describe as a narcissistic mother and two "perfect" older half-siblings.

I will never know all the experiences or circumstances that shaped my mom. How they affected her decision-making, why she made some of the choices she made, or how she felt about any of them. And it is not my place to share all I know.

But here is what I do know and what I will share:

My mother loved me. Deeply. Unconditionally.

My mother was a loyal and faithful friend. To a fault.

My mother did not know her worth and surrounded herself with people who took advantage of that.

My mother was human. Flawed and messy and kind and beautiful. 

She did the absolute best she could with what she had.

Even if what she had was not always enough for some.

As I share, parts of my story may not seem to paint my mother in the best light. But I promise, that is never my intent. Because on my worst days, in the eighteen years my mother was here, she was my rock. She was who I sought out for safety and solace. She was where I ran - every time. And every time, she showed up.

And ya'll - I had some bad days. I was not an easy teenager. And I'm sure my mother wasn't either. Because, you see, her story started with her (narcissist) mother's story.

We all are walking out our own stories, carrying around the mess of the stories that came before ours, the stories that formed the humans that formed us.

So please, remember that as we start this journey of storytelling together. 

Hear my heart, not just the story. Remember that every story has people, complex and flawed humans, just like you, attached to it.

And my mom was one of the good ones.