Teaching My Son the Lessons I Didn't Learn
Much to my surprise, I'm finding motherhood to be incredibly therapeutic. Part of it is certainly that I have felt far more socially connected since my son's birth than at any other time in my life. Ironic, I know, but true. I feel incredibly supported by my friendships with other parents, accepted for who I am, and inspired to grow. Finally experiencing the social connection that I desperately craved for my entire childhood has increased my self-esteem and has decreased my issues with depression, which in turn helps me feel like a better mother. But more specifically, as a mother, I feel like all the kindness and love that I pour into my son's life is somehow healing my own childhood wounds. I see him learning the lessons that I wish I had learned myself as a child, and I feel at peace. He is learning, right from the start, that his feelings are important . As a toddler, he has so many feelings, which often appear suddenly and catch both of us off gu...