At a recent social event, someone posed a question that caught me off guard:
“If your 10-year-old self could meet you today, what would she say?”
For a moment, I froze. My mind went blank.
But then, memories of my childhood flooded in—the loneliness, the aching desire for love, the silent wish that someone, anyone, could have been the mother I needed.
And suddenly, I knew the answer.
My 10-year-old self would have looked at me and said:
“I wish you were my mother.”
That realization hit me harder than I expected.
Growing up, I often felt unloved and unprotected.
I used to fantasize that my auntie, my cousin, or even a stranger could replace the mother I had. I longed for affection, encouragement, and a feeling of being cherished—simple things that somehow always seemed just out of reach.
This deep-rooted pain shaped me more than I realized.
As a mother myself now, I often worry if I am doing enough for my boys. I wanted daughters—perhaps in an unconscious attempt to rewrite the broken mother-daughter bond I endured. When I found out I was carrying boys, I voiced my regret, unaware of the invisible scars those words might leave on them.
In response to my own neglected childhood, I became the opposite of my own mother: over-involved, overly protective, hyper-present.
I baked cakes for every birthday.
I attended every school event.
I fought for them when teachers or peers treated them unfairly.
I stood up even when I was standing alone.
Yet in my quest to give them everything I never had, I sometimes lost balance.
I realized that swinging from under-involvement to over-involvement was not healing the pain—it was just a different side of the same wound.
180 degrees from sickness is still sickness.
The truth is, I carried my childhood pain into adulthood, letting it seep into how I parented, how I reacted, how I lived.
I was trying to heal the little girl inside me by overcompensating in the present.
It’s time to truly heal her.
I look back now and see the things I once tried to minimize or excuse:
I was lonely.
I was unhappy.
I was left to fend for myself emotionally.
I was excluded, not celebrated.
I was denied the simple joys that every child should have experienced.
It was not okay. And it’s okay to finally say that.
If I could meet that little girl now, I would tell her:
“You were always enough.”
“You never had to be perfect to be loved.”
“You deserved protection, affection, and joy, just by being you.”
Today, I choose to reparent myself.
I choose to love that little girl fiercely, unconditionally, the way she should have been loved all along.
She is no longer alone.
She has me.
And I will make sure she knows:
There is someone who sees her, cherishes her, and will always fight for her happiness.
