Often things we are most scared to write about are the things that we should truly be writing about. This is one of those posts. One of those posts that I am going to have to look the other way when I hit publish. But it’s also one of those posts I know I need to write. Writing is healing to me. Writing is a part of who I am and a part of my journey, and sometimes I need to write it just as much as someone out there might need to read it.

My journey as a mom has encompassed so much. I have grown tremendously as a person. I am learning what it’s like to set myself aside. I am learning what it means to love unconditionally. I am learning how desperately I can’t do this parenting thing alone. I am learning so much about myself. This entire journey has been full of so much learning.

But recently, it’s also been full of a lot of hurting.

I haven’t shared my story much on this blog because as a writer you always struggle with the protection of other people. What is too much to share? What isn’t enough to share? How do I protect people involved? Just so many questions that you weigh before writing on the World Wide Web for anyone to read.

But this is my story too.

This is my story of healing and freedom. This is my story and I get to choose how it’s told. And this story, it needs to be shared, because somewhere out there someone needs to hear it. Even if that someone is me.

Motherhood is teaching me, it’s stretching me, it’s growing me. And motherhood is also healing me.

I grew up in a family full of addiction, abuse, and very hurt people. Hurt people raising children means hurt children, and those hurt children grow into hurting adults. I have been so thankful to have found Jesus to carry me through these times and bring safety when I needed it most. He was the only way I pulled through such brokenness. But I was forced to grow up quickly. I was forced to keep things together in ways no child should have. And I faced a lot of things alone, when I shouldn’t have had to.

There has been a process of mourning that loss of childhood, the hurt, and the abandonment in my life. While I am thankful for all the protection God had in my life, it doesn’t mean that the bad doesn’t hurt me in some way.

But motherhood has this way of bringing things out in you that you didn’t know you had.

Motherhood has brought out a determination to fight in me, to fight for my kids in ways that I should have been fought for as a child.

For every time that I look at my child and answer a cry, there is a sense of mourning for what I lost as a child, but then the fight rises up in me for something different. The fight to be different and offer different for my kids. A fight that, through God’s grace, I will win because He has already won it for me.

Nothing can take away those dark moments in my childhood that are a part of my story. Nothing can change the past. But I can determine to change the future.

So as I sit here rocking my baby girl, I breathe in the moment. I breathe in that sweet baby smell that I love so much. I feel her soft breathing against my chest. I hear her little noises as she relaxes into me. And I whisper to her that I will always be there. I will always be there like someone should have been there for me. I will fight for her like someone should have fought for me.

I will fight for her, because in a sense, while I am fighting for her, I am fighting for that little girl within me.

I will fight for me, because in fighting for me, I am fighting for my kids.

Each time I do something different, each time I refuse to let this be the sense of normal in my life, each time I say enough is enough I am stepping into the victory that I know is promised for me on the other side.

Each time I am there for my kids it restores what was lost in my own life. It doesn’t change it, no, but it changes the future. Changing the future is worth fighting for. Giving my children something different is worth the hard parts. Being that difference is healing. Even though I can’t get back what I lost, motherhood is healing me because I am changing what childhood looks like for my kids.