I saw a post in one of the mom groups on social media today. A first-time mom was asking for advice on how to prepare herself to take her two month old in for their vaccinations because she knew it would break her heart to hear her baby cry.
Oh, girl. We’ve all been there.
I wish I had some advice, but here’s the truth: this is the first of so, so many heartbreaks.
Your kids will break your heart every time they’re in pain. They’ll break your heart the first time you drop them at daycare and leave to go back to work as though you’re the same person you were six weeks ago. It’ll break your heart every time you miss them and every time you worry they miss you.
It’ll break your heart when they don’t fit into your arms the same way they used to, when they go to Kindergarten, and the first day of every school year after. It’ll break your heart the first time they forget to kiss you goodby because they’re so excited to go somewhere, and the first time something happens during their day that they forget to tell you about. It’ll break your heart when they are mad at you, when their friends are mad at them, when school is too hard or too easy, when you realize they’re old enough to know what it means to be lonely.
And all that will be before they ever even get to middle school.
Parenting breaks your heart. Repeatedly and often. And there might be days when the heartbreak alone is exhausting, when you hope that someone in a mom group on Facebook has a magic cure because you’re not sure if you’re cut out for the amount of heartbreak being a parent requires.
But here’s the thing: You are. You were made for this, mama. Every time your heart breaks apart and stitches itself back together, it gets bigger and holds more, until eventually you could fit the whole world in there if you had to, because someday you might need to. For them.
Standing in the heartbreak of parenthood is how we teach our children to stand in the heartbreak of life. We let it tear us apart and put us back together into the people we were meant to be for each other.