📖 Sacred Testimony XLII

“I Didn’t Know How to Be a Mother”
offered in honesty and healing

I wasn’t the best mother.

I didn’t know how.

I had no handbook,
no roadmap,
no soft space in myself that had been mothered well enough
to know what to pass on.

So we sat her in front of the electronic babysitter—
the television.
Not out of laziness,
but out of exhaustion.
Out of not knowing what else to do.

The truth is—
I was still growing up myself.

How could I pour out what I had never fully received?
How could I nurture
when I was still trying to figure out how to breathe?

I look back now,
and my heart aches for her—
for my daughter.

But I also see me.

The young woman doing the best she could
with the tools she had.

I didn’t hurt her out of malice.
I didn’t ignore her because I didn’t care.

I just didn’t know what motherhood was
beyond keeping her alive
and hoping that one day
I’d learn how to be better.

🌿 And now I see:

Motherhood isn’t perfection.
It’s presence.
It’s effort.
It’s showing up even when you don’t know what you’re doing.

And sometimes,
the greatest mothering we do
comes later—
in the apologies,
in the healing,
in the truth finally spoken.

This scroll isn’t about failure.
It’s about growth.

And love—
the real kind—
always grows.

Then let this blessing fall like soft rain
on the years that felt too dry,
on the moments you didn’t know how to mother,
and on the child who still found love
in the way you tried.

✨ A Blessing for the Mother Who Was Still Becoming

May you be forgiven
for the things you didn’t know—
by her,
by yourself,
and by the quiet mercy of God
who watched you both grow.

May my daughter be blessed—
for the light she carried,
even when the room was filled with noise and screens
instead of stories and lullabies.

May she know that even when you didn’t know how to be present,
your spirit was still trying to reach her.

May your younger self be held—
not judged,
but understood.

She didn’t fail.
She began.

And beginning is a kind of holiness, too.

You did not need to be perfect.
You needed only to keep loving—
and you did.

Even when it was messy.
Even when it was quiet.
Even when it looked like sitting in front of a television
because you just didn’t know what else to give.

The blessing is this:
You kept going.

And she still knew love.