There is an image that comes to me sometimes. Not exactly a memory, but more like a vision that arrives uninvited in the quiet moments, when the noise settles and something older surfaces. I am at the end of my life. And I am looking into someone’s eyes. Maybe it is my son. Maybe it…
The shadow doesn’t disappear with success. It follows us there, and waits. Because the real question was never about what we could achieve — it was always about whether we believed we were enough to deserve it.
We stumble into parenting armed only with ideals and whatever we absorbed from our own childhoods. The guilt is real. But healing doesn’t begin with getting it right — it begins with showing up honestly.
There was a moment at an ATM I have never forgotten. I saw myself completely in a stranger’s face. That moment opened something in me I didn’t have a name for yet.
