With Connection

My mom recently died, so she has been on my mind a lot these days. One of the last things she said to me, d***y on painkillers, was: "you are my dream girl". While the silliness of those words is not lost on me, the truth of that phrase hit me hard. I was my mom's dream come true, her perfect little chaos maker, the child of her heart and most hopeful parenting aspirations. My mom never expected perfection from me, she delighted in who I was and gave me the gift of her love freely and without expectation about who I would be or how I would live. I chose a very unconventional path and she believed in my vision for my life wholeheartedly.
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As an adoptee, there were many ways in which my mom didn’t know how to support me. She didn’t really understand adoption trauma and she didn’t know that the loss of my family and culture haunted me. She just didn’t know what she didn’t know. But celebrating me for my unique self- that she did right. She never pushed me to be more like her, or encouraged me to pursue her dreams. Who I am was not just “enough” for her, it was everything to her. I learned a lot of things from my mom, like how to parallel park and how to pair wine and cheese... but the most important thing she showed me is that every child deserves to be loved wildly, with no expectation to be anything they are not.
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