Thursday, August 25, 2011

Dear Abacus and Samurai,

In your lives so far you have learned many things.  For this I am so very proud of you.  I am not always proud, however, of the things I inadvertently teach you.  I just hope that you learn good lessons from my life's struggles.  Lessons which you do not have to replicate yourself to truly understand!

So much of what I learned about love, true love, I learned from you two.  As a matter of fact, the love we share highlights the imperfections in the other loves I have known in my life.  

I have taught you that marriages sometimes end.  I hope what you take away from that is, above and beyond everything else, you need to realize your own happiness.  If you are unhappy, you are depriving everyone you love in your life of the happiness that they know you possess, and, therefore, a portion of their own happiness.  I hope that you learn that we did try to make things work, and in doing so, came to understand our best path to secure everyone's present and future happiness, was away from each other.

I used to count my marriage amongst my failures.  But how can I count something as a failure which had such an amazing result.  I hope you can see what I now see, my marriage with your father as a necessary passage to great personal growth and understanding.  A huge step toward actualizing a woman that you can forever be proud to call your mother.  Something to know about me, I have a lot of energy, and to keep it positive, I need positive growing experiences.  When I stagnate, my energy becomes negative, and it can suck me down quite quickly.  And when someone else's energy is negative either in general or toward me, the downward spiral is nearly inescapable.

In my life I have so much hope.  Hope that was missing for so long and largely born (or reborn) out of creating and growing and loving you two.  It has been renewed tenfold by a new love in my life.  And what I want to say is this.  I hope to show you, by example, how to build and grow new love instead of continuing to show you endings.  I hope to give you back all of the important lessons you have taught me (or perhaps reminded me), at any times you may forget (this happens to the best of us).  

And I hope, beyond all other hope, that you NEVER know the pain of loneliness that I have known.  Because, always, my babies, ALWAYS, I hope my words and actions allow you to remember and keep me close the way I will always keep you close.

Love,
Mama