Entitlement

My sweet girl,

I think I understand something now that I couldn’t fully see before.

When children come to their parents with pain, they are not always coming as the adults standing in front of us. Sometimes they are coming as the age they were when the wound first happened.

And I didn’t understand that then.

For so long, I heard your words through the ears of an overwhelmed adult trying to survive life, shame, pressure, work, expectations, marriage, fear, and my own unresolved pain. I thought we were having conversations woman to woman, both responsible for carrying ourselves.

But now I realize there were moments when my little girl was standing in front of me too.

Not literally.
Emotionally.

I know this now because I finally saw it inside myself.

There were times in my adulthood when I was hurting so deeply that all I wanted was my mother. I wanted her to hold me emotionally, to steady me, to make things feel safe and survivable. And for a long time I judged myself for that feeling. I called it entitlement. I questioned why I thought anyone owed me comfort.

But it wasn’t entitlement.

It was the child inside me still reaching for her mother.

It was the little girl in me hoping that maybe this time, when I was hurting, my mom would finally be the rock I needed her to be.

And the heartbreaking part is that I don’t think she was capable of that. Not because she didn’t love me in the ways she knew how, but because she was carrying her own wounds, her own exhaustion, her own survival.

By the time I was reaching for her, she was finally reaching a stage of life where she could breathe. Where the noise quieted. Where she was finally trying to hold herself together.

And suddenly I saw us both clearly.

Then, almost like an echo through generations, I heard you differently too.

I heard your questions again.
Your hurt.
Your distance.
Your anger.
Your longing.

And your voice no longer sounded like only the adult woman standing in front of me.

I heard my little girl.

I heard the child underneath the words.

And in that moment, I understood something that shattered me quietly:
there were times you were not asking me for perfection.
You were asking me to feel safe enough to bring your pain to me.

I wish I had understood that sooner.

I wish I had known how to pause my own fear, my own shame, my own defenses long enough to recognize the younger version of you reaching for me underneath it all.

I think sometimes we repeat what we survived without realizing it. Not because we don’t love our children, but because unresolved pain narrows our vision. We react from survival instead of connection.

And I see now that while I spent so much of my life trying to become a better mother than the one I had, there were still moments where my own wounds stood between us.

That realization hurts deeply.

But it has also changed the way I see you.
The way I see my mother.
The way I see myself.

I no longer see only blame.
I see generations of women carrying pain they did not know how to name, all trying to love each other while protecting the wounded child inside themselves.

None of this erases the hurt.
I know that.

But I needed to say somewhere, even if only to myself, that I finally understand more now than I did then.

And if I could go back, I would hold your pain more gently.
I would listen slower.
I would look beneath the words.
I would remember that sometimes even grown daughters are still little girls asking:
“Mom, are you there for me?”

And I would want you to know:
I always loved you.
Even in the moments I failed to show up the way you needed.