This morning I spent time with my little girl. \u00a0We had a tea party and we sat at the table, coloring pictures together. \u00a0I am very thankful for these ‘simple’ times. \u00a0It has been a great blessing and instrument of healing for me to have a daughter.<\/p>\n
My mother did not spend a lot of time ‘playing’ with me when I was a little girl. \u00a0I don’t hold this against her – she wasn’t in the most ideal environment to be able to be nurturing. \u00a0I was actually a lot closer to my grandmother who lived on the same farmstead. \u00a0We did a lot of ‘playing’ together. \u00a0I remember getting into my grandmother’s sewing kit and playing with all her buttons – there’s a picture somewhere of me sitting on the floor with all her sewing things on the floor around me. \u00a0I also remember helping my grandma make bread – she would make it by hand (without a mixer, until her arthritis got too bad). \u00a0And she’d let me punch down the dough as hard as my 4 year old arms could. \u00a0I am incredibly thankful for these moments with my grandmother. \u00a0I could be a ‘little girl’ around her. \u00a0She was more of a ‘mother’ to me than my own mother.<\/p>\n
I lost the ability to simply be a ‘little girl’ as I was growing up. \u00a0I became hard and would not show emotions. \u00a0I tried to behave much older than I really was. \u00a0I became very ‘serious’, trying so hard to please my father and live up to unspoken expectations. \u00a0I was so ‘hard’ than when my grandmother passed away when I was 13 years old, I would not cry at her funeral. \u00a0I stuffed all the pain and grief inside. \u00a0It’s only been in the last few years that I have been able to honestly grieve my grandmother’s passing. \u00a0I miss her a lot. \u00a0I wish I could talk to her now, about everything that’s happened in my life. \u00a0I think she would have liked my daughter and had a lot of fun with her. (I’m tearing up as I think about the fact that my daughter won’t ever know my grandma – she was such a great woman)<\/p>\n
That’s why I cherish these ‘simple’ moments with my girl. \u00a0It allows me to ‘go back’, as it were, and become a ‘little girl’ again myself. \u00a0And I hope that when my daughter grows up, she will look back on these moments with fondness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"