A Mother’s Creed To Their Adult Children
A Mother’s Creed To Their Adult Children (Mother's Day)
I am a mother, yes,
but that is not the only syllable of my name.
I have carried children in my body and in my mind’s forever pocket,
I still carry dreams of things I wish to do and accomplish outside of being a mom,
and a pulse attuned to journeys my children may never take.
To love my grown ones fiercely is not a vow to shrink.
It is an invitation to widen—to show them what an undiminished life looks like.
So when I say no to things my guidance system tells me I must decline in order to self-prioritize,
when I wander off-trail to listen for my own heartbeat,
when I choose silence instead of solving,
I am not abandoning the title Mother.
I am restoring its soil, so the roots do not starve.
Know this, children of my heart:
I still long to help when I genuinely can,
to appear when presence will nourish us both,
to hold space in crises and celebrate your dawns.
Yet alongside that devotion, I now reclaim the stretch of road I once set aside.
Remember: when I was raising you, I was a hundred percent all in. Now, in these seasoned years, I choose to explore the paths I never had time to walk.
I have been your age, but you have not yet been mine; withhold judgment, for you cannot know how you will feel when you stand where I am.
As you step into (or continue) your own mothering journey, keep room for the facets of you that are not called “Mom,” so your identity never dims beneath a single role.
If my wholeness unsettles you at first,
may it also teach you this:
That love is widest when it is not hoarded,
that boundaries are a form of truth-telling,
that a mother’s radiance was never meant to flicker out
once the cradle ceased to rock.
I remain your steady origin,
and I remain a thousand other constellations besides.
Both truths fit within the same sky.
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