Yes Chloe, I do understand your sensitivity.

 

(Photo 2008, those ferns in the back, most definitlely have died.)

"My own mother doesn't understand my sensitive nature!!!"

When my daughter screamed at me the other night that I didn't understand her sensitivity, I locked myself in the bedroom with a cup of tea, and my computer, and let her father deal with it.

The next morning he said, "Hey, so I have an idea for you to have a really good day today. Just tell Chloe you are sorry."

I didn't want to say sorry. I wanted to tell her::

When you were a baby you cried 8-9 hours a day. Everything about becoming a parent was shattered in my heart. I loved you but I couldn't understand what I had done to create a baby so sad, so hurt, so wanting, so lost, so hurt.

And I held you as you cried and I cried. We spent the next 6 months this way. I never thought it would end. Somehow it did.

But then you continunued to need to nurse all night long to stay asleep. If I even moved my body you would wake. You would nurse so many times a night that I thought I would dry up and fade away. The women in my life told me to let you cry it out. But I knew that you needed me in a way I couldn't explain. Something inside of me knew I had to do this for you.

Then you turned 2 and I knew you were ready. I told you that we would be having our last nurse before you fell asleep and then nurse again in the morning. We spent two nights with you hitting me, screaming at me, punching my back because I had to turn away and cry while you worked out your pain.

My relationship with the man I fell in love with at 19 suffered because I had nothing in me to give him. I was used up. Neither of us blame kids, but we both know that we lost each other.

I protected you with a fierceness that only a mama bear, or a mama with a child with highly sensitive needs understands. You became my world. I no longer recognized myself. You were my reality.

We would go to story time, you were almost three years old, me pregnant with your brother, and you would have to nurse 4 times to make it through. Thank God for my friends who I met when we moved, who also nursed toddlers. I'm not sure I would have made it through that time without them.

I loved your sensitivity. I nurtured it. I lived it. I became it. I am it.

Now you are 11. Sensitive. Beautiful. Smarter than I may ever have been. Not obesessed with boys (can't relate!). An artist that somehow grew from my belly.

Yes Chloe, I do understand your sensitivity.

Inside of my own sensitivity I didn't know how to just let you be seen and understood. Then your father told me to say sorry. And when I did you looked at me with such joy and said, "Thank you." It was that simple.

You healed my own child's heart showing me how easy it can be. That I don't have to lecture you, or be right. That I can just say sorry and make your eyes sparkle and your love for me shine.

So I will say sorry over and over and over when I make you feel wrong. Because well, I'm kind of senstitive too.

I kind of really truly love us this way.