Court is Still in Session: I AM GUILTY!!

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The Apology Has to Be as Big as the Disrespect

I have to tell the truth about something.

When you're going through a season unlike anything you've ever experienced before, you tend to reach for the tools that worked the last time.

Especially when you've done some work on yourself.

You think, Okay. I've survived something before. I know what to do.

So when I lost Jaxon, I tried to grieve him using some of the same tools I used when I lost Darren.

But there was one problem:

I had never been here before.

Yes, I had lost a son before.

But I had never buried this son.

I had never been this woman.

And I had never carried this much loss at one time.

When Darren died, I was already in survival mode because Jaxon had suffered a birth injury. Darren had gotten to experience life before his injury. Jaxon never got that opportunity before his.

Their stories were different.

Their lives were different.

Their needs were different.

And my grief for each of them is different.

But they had something devastating in common:

Both of my babies suffered because of the actions of humans.

So after Darren died, I survived the way I knew how. I leaned heavily into God. I worked. I kept moving. I had a village, although I remained incredibly private.

And most importantly, I still had somebody who needed me to stay alive.

Jaxon.

There wasn't time for me to completely fall apart.

But when Jaxon died, everything was different.

His death came on top of everything else.

I had lost my brother only three months earlier. I had lost a father figure a couple of years before that. There had been loss after loss, transition after transition, disappointment after disappointment.

It was compounded grief.

And somewhere inside all of that pain, I did something that I have to take responsibility for.

I gave my mama hell.

There.

I said it.

And I don't mean the cute kind of "we got on each other's nerves."

I mean I have put my mother through hell these last ten months.

We are not perfect.

Our relationship is not perfect.

There are things she did that hurt me.

There were moments during this season when I desperately needed something from her that she did not know how to give me.

Two things can be true.

My mother did not always know how to support me in this season.

And I did not know how to be devastated without sometimes devastating the people closest to me.

That does not excuse my behavior.

It explains where some of it came from.

For ten years, I didn't really get to just hurt.

I spent essentially my entire thirties being Nurse Mommy.

Caregiver.

Advocate.

Researcher.

Decision-maker.

Protector.

The person who had to know.

Because when you're parenting medically complex children, being wrong isn't always just being wrong.

Sometimes a decision is life or death.

If I didn't know the answer, I had to find somebody who did.

If a doctor said something that didn't make sense, I had to question it.

If something changed, I had to notice it.

If I missed something, the consequences could be catastrophic.

So I trained myself to believe:

You cannot get this wrong.

Imagine living inside that sentence for ten years.

You cannot get this wrong.

You cannot miss something.

You cannot be tired.

You cannot stop paying attention.

You cannot trust blindly.

You cannot fall apart.

You cannot just be sad.

Because somebody needs you.

That created something in me.

It made me an incredible advocate.

It helped make me the mother my boys needed.

But it also created a woman who could become incredibly hard when she was scared.

A woman who expected answers.

A woman who expected people to anticipate needs.

A woman who sometimes struggled to understand how somebody could love me and still not know what to do.

And then Jaxon died.

Suddenly, there was no medical emergency for me to solve.

There was no treatment plan to research.

There was no medication schedule to fix.

There was no doctor to question.

There was no machine alarming.

There was just pain.

And I didn't know how to just hurt.

I had not had the luxury of doing that for a decade.

So some of that pain became anger.

Some became frustration.

Some became expectation.

And some of it landed directly on my mother.

The woman who has actually been one of the constants of my life.

And here is the part that has broken me open:

I judged her motherhood by mine.

I looked at what I did for my children and compared it to what she did for me.

I looked at the way I researched, fought, advocated, questioned and figured things out, and somewhere along the way I convinced myself that because her "all" didn't look like my "all," maybe it wasn't all.

And I was wrong.

My mother did the very thing I did.

She parented with what she had.

She didn't have all the answers.

Neither did I.

She leaned on people who knew things she didn't know.

So did I.

She used her village.

So did I.

She figured things out as she went.

So did I.

She made mistakes.

So did I.

And somehow I took some of the very things that helped make me who I am and used them as evidence against her.

That hurts to admit.

Because the truth is, part of the reason I became the kind of mother who could advocate relentlessly for Darren and Jaxon is because I watched a woman figure motherhood out without having all the answers herself.

My mama. REGINA....and I GOTTA PUT SOME RESPECT ON HER NAME...BIG R NOT THE LITTLE ONE

And I took that away from her.

I made her feel like what she gave wasn't enough.

I made her mistakes bigger than her sacrifice.

I made her humanity something she had to defend.

And all while I have been building an entire ministry around a word I apparently still have some homework in:

Grace.

How can I talk about grace and refuse to extend it?

How can I tell people that two things can be true and then refuse to allow two things to be true about my own mother?

She could have hurt me.

And loved me.

She could have gotten things wrong.

And still have done her best.

I could have needed more from her.

And she could have had no idea how to give it.

I can hold her accountable for things that hurt me without sentencing her to a lifetime of guilt for being human.

And I can WILL hold myself accountable too.

Because grief explains a lot.

But grief does not give me permission to destroy people who love me.

Pain explains why my hands were shaking.

It does not mean I get to use those hands to throw stones.

And Mama—

I threw some stones.

At you.

The woman who has been standing there all along.

And I am sorry.

Not the kind of sorry that comes with a "but."

Not "I'm sorry, but I was grieving."

Not "I'm sorry, but you should have known."

Not "I'm sorry, but you hurt me too."

No.

I am sorry.

I am sorry for the times I made you feel like you were not a good mother.

I am sorry for every time my words made you question sacrifices I wasn't old enough to understand when you made them.

I am sorry for judging your motherhood through the lens of mine.

I am sorry for expecting you to have answers simply because you were my mama.

I am sorry for making you responsible for fixing pain that no mother on this earth could fix.

Because what answer were you supposed to give me?

What were you supposed to say when your daughter looked at you and essentially asked:

"Mama, how do I survive burying another CHILD?"

There isn't an answer.

And maybe I was angry because I desperately wanted my mama to have one.

Because I'm still somebody's baby too.

That may be the hardest truth in all of this.

I spent ten years being the mama who had to know.

And when I finally encountered something I couldn't fix, I wanted to become somebody's daughter again.

I wanted my mama to make it better.

And she couldn't.

Nobody could.

So I blamed her sometimes for not being able to reach into an impossible situation and somehow mother the pain out of me.

Mama, that wasn't fair.

You deserved grace from me.

You still do.

And the apology has to be as big as the disrespect.

So I'm not whispering this.

I'm not hiding it in a private conversation so nobody knows I was wrong.

If my disrespect was loud, my accountability can be loud too.

Regina, MAMA, I am sorry.

I am sorry for breaking your heart while mine was broken.

I am sorry for being cruel when what I really was was devastated.

I am sorry for every moment I made you feel devalued.

And I am especially sorry that I temporarily forgot something I know to be true:

You are part of the reason I know how to mother.

You didn't do everything the way I did it.

You weren't supposed to.

You were Regina raising Shantrael.

I was Shantrael raising Darren, Jaxon and Nolin.

Different women.

Different children.

Different circumstances.

Different tools.

Same assignment:

Love your babies with everything you've got.

And you did.

So did I.

And Mama, I'm still learning from you.

Because apparently one of the lessons you gave me without even knowing it was this:

Sometimes motherhood isn't having the answer.

Sometimes motherhood is staying close enough while your child is falling apart that when she finally realizes she's been fighting the wrong person...

you're still there.

And you were.

You are.

I love you.

I'm sorry.

And thank you for being my mama.

"Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you." — Ephesians 4:32

Today, grace starts at home.

And this time—

I'm giving IT to my mama.

~Shantrael, Regina's Daughter