What They Carry

"Sentimental Value" and the question I'm most afraid to ask as a mother

I don't know which version of me my children carry into adulthood.

I fell apart during the years they needed me most, and I have to live with that. What if that never heals, and they are quietly moving farther and farther away from me, both literally and figuratively?

I watched “Sentimental Value” last weekend. It’s a story about an estranged father re-entering his daughters’ lives. It cracked me open, exposed me, and brought this fear I live with to the surface.

Watch the trailer. You'll understand.

See (I am scared to write this in black-and-white. She might see it, and it will build a wall between us even more), I have had to distance myself from my own mother. What if my children ever choose to do the same? This is the unbearable question I carry. We already have a lot of separateness because of where they live and the lives they are creating without me, and it’s scary.

I know they’ve all been in counseling because of me, and I don’t know anything about those conversations. My oldest had already left for college, but I carry deep regret about his earlier years too. I'll never fully know what those cost him, but I know they cost him something. And I do know that especially for my younger two, my destructive years forever changed them. They lost their mother to alcohol during their teenage years, and it was terrible for them.

I am so careful now. I am scared of triggering them and crossing their boundaries. I hold back large parts of myself. The intense parts. The deeply feeling parts. Definitely the angry parts. These parts that might make them shrink away. My biggest fear is living in old age without them, and them feeling like a relationship with me is an obligation. We rarely talk about those years, and when we do, we tiptoe around them. But I know they live with it. I live with it. It’s a deep wound for all of us.

I want a healthy family. But wanting it doesn't undo what happened. And I don't know if my children can feel that want without also feeling the weight of everything that came before it. What if they feel about me the way I feel about my own mother? It’s terrifying.

I want to be someone they can tell the truth to. Even if that truth includes me. There’s been a little of that, but it always comes with great pain for both of us. Of course, we dance around our past, try to pretend it doesn’t exist, but know it’s changed us forever.

Are you a mother living with something you can't take back? Maybe we can cry and hug each other, even from afar. We're in this together, trying to become someone worth coming home to.

From my heart to yours,

Jenny

If this touched you, share it with a mother who needs to feel less alone today.