My Mother’s Day Mirror

The new logo was designed by my eleven-year-old son. The tree represents physical healing, the water emotional, the wind mental, and the fire spiritual. The purple flame and the tree of life are energy healing symbols from my Foundations course. I’m a proud Mama. Beyond being proud of his talent, this feels full circle for me. Like all of the healing I’ve done - for myself, for him and his brother. It mattered. He gets it. It was all worth it. And I’m grateful. 

Our children are our mirrors, reflecting back to us our growth, our effort, our energy. But they also show us our own dysfunction,  limitations, and shortcomings. Because they see us in our truest form. Unguarded. Unmasked. The real, raw, us. 

And on Mother’s Day, my five-year-old held up a mirror. And I couldn’t look away from the reflection.

Their dad had been keeping a card that our five-year-old made for Mother's day. When our older son told me, I felt a flash of hurt - until I understood why. 

His teacher had asked what Mommy is really good at. He’d said “Yelling.” And she'd written it down. Their dad, to his credit, had been trying to spare me. I thanked him for his consideration. But I needed to know. 

That card was my mirror. And it told me, plainly, that I needed to do better. 

So I leaned into everything I have: energy healing, my own therapy, deep introspection into the patterns I’d inherited and the ones I was unconsciously repeating. I worked on staying grounded instead of reactive. On holding boundaries calmly instead of fighting for control. 

It showed up in small moments. A frustration that used to spiral into conflict - Instead, I found myself simply saying “okay” and moving forward without needing to win the moment. I wasn’t disappearing into my old reactivity anymore. I was staying solid. 

Yes, our children reflect back our wounds. But they also reflect our healing. Cycle breaking happens in small, ordinary moments. A choice to connect instead of correct. A boundary held firmly, but with grace. Open discussions about what’s not working and working together to problem solve. 

Summer is always the hardest. My boys don’t like camps, and they get bored sitting at home all day while I’m at work and their dad works from home. I had been getting home late from work, and the boys were fighting. It got to the point where I would pull in the driveway and hear screaming and crying. I talked to them and realized: they weren’t getting their emotional cups filled during the day, when I was at work. We came up with a game plan: I would give each boy one on one time, and then all of us would play together. The fights stopped immediately. But it came at a cost. 

I had been going hard: 50 hour work weeks, playing with them for hours each evening and all weekend. We went downtown on the 4th to go to the comic book shop and a kid friendly coffee shop with outdoor swings. We had to pay for parking, so I wanted to park near the comic book shop and then walk two blocks down to the coffee shop. My five-year-old started complaining, and I lost it, yelling at them, saying they were lazy. I immediately apologized. I felt terrible. And then, the eleven year old said “You’re exhausted. You’re doing it all. We see that. It’s okay. We can walk two blocks.” My five year old said: “yeah, I’m sorry Mom.” “No, I’m sorry,” I told them. “I was projecting my feelings of resentment onto you. That was wrong.” “Eh, I am kinda lazy, but yeah, you were,” my eleven year old said. We all laughed. And then we went to get some comics for them and coffee for me. As we sat in the coffee shop, the eleven-year-old read his new comic while I played dinosaurs with the five-year-old. We pretended that the coal in the fire pit was a prehistoric pile of dinosaur poop. 

So maybe I’ll never stop yelling. Maybe I’ll always be a work in progress. But I’ll always make the repair. I’ll always do my best to own up to my mistakes. To reflect. To dig deeper. I think that’s how cycles get broken: Not by being perfect. By being able to look in the mirror, see, and own up to our imperfections. So children don’t believe it’s their fault. So they see us modeling accountability. My sons saw me trying, and then making the repair when I needed to. 

Afterwards, I knew I wasn’t running with a full tank. I took stock of my self care routine. I hadn’t been going for walks in the woods with my dogs lately. I had put up a pool for the boys, and we swam after work instead of walking. That Monday morning, I got up early and took the dogs. In the woods, I felt my energy clearing, my nervous system relaxing. I took a deep breath, and I swear I heard a tree whisper “Welcome back.” 

The other day my eleven-year-old asked the five-year-old “What do you think Mommy is good at?” to see how he would respond. “Playing. Mommy is really good at playing. And she’s funny. And fun.” 

I will always be in a state of becoming who I’ve always wanted to be: stable, steady, boundaried. I’m a work in progress. Yet, I know who I am. A feisty Aries, like my five-year-old. A sensitive soul, like my eleven year old. Deeply spiritual, like my sister. Deeply intellectual like my brothers. A nature lover like my father. A good problem solver, like my mother. Resilient and unbreakable. Like both of my parents. Born to an Irish grandfather, a British father, and a midwestern American mother who once heard singing in the wind while visiting ancestral land in Oklahoma. She asked the guide, who pointed to her and said “You have Native blood.”  “I do,” she had replied, thinking of her Cherokee ancestors. Who were marched via the trail of tears from North Carolina to Oklahoma. And now, we’ve come home. By choice. 

A breaker of cycles. A creator of healing systems. A deep feeler. A physical, emotional, and spiritual healer. A cancer survivor. A lifelong fighter. A unifier. Who loves deeply. Who treasures my children, family,  and friends. Who sees life as a journey. Who sees grief as my greatest teacher. Who sees my flaws and gives them grace while working to heal them. 

Whose mother’s gifts are mirrored in me, as I sing the songs I hear on the wind in service to others. Whose son’s gifts are a mirror of his father’s mother, an art professor who had an eye for design. We may inherit our mothers’ and fathers' traumas, but so too do we inherit their gifts, grit, and triumphs. And it's those that have the power to make us whole again. Now, when I look in the mirror, I see the whole picture reflected back to me. More whole than I’ve ever been before. Then I hear my great-great-great grandmother, who was traded to a white man for a horse, whisper “keep going.” And my sister adds “We’re right here.”