The Wounded Mother

 Motherhood brought me

a love deeper than language,
a joy I could never have imagined.

And still,
I can see now
that the mother I was then
was deeply wounded.

More than anything,
I wanted to be different
from the parents who raised me.
I wanted to give my children
the safety, tenderness,
and steadiness I had longed for myself.

But recovery was still years away.

I was winging motherhood
while carrying unhealed pain
I did not yet understand.

What began as experimentation
slowly became escape.

Drugs offered relief
from the self-hatred
and buried sorrow
I had carried since childhood.

I was, in many ways,
the perfect soil for addiction—
a frightened heart
searching for silence.

And addiction
took hold of me hard.

Those years were dark—
for my family
and for me.

The dream of becoming
the mother I never had
began to fracture beneath the weight
of my own suffering.

I did not repeat
all the same wounds
I had known growing up.

But I made wounds of my own.

That truth is painful to hold.

And it would take many years—
and much unraveling—
before I could begin
the slow and sacred work
of forgiving myself.