“Babe, why wouldn’t she want this?” A question I tearfully asked my husband in our postpartum room after having our baby over ten weeks ago.

There is something inexplicably humbling about giving birth. Labor is quite literally the worst pain anyone can feel physically, at least to me. You spend ten months preparing your body and mind for the day of labor and delivery. I had the most beautiful experience laboring and then delivering our baby. Getting to labor at home for over 12 hours was exactly what I wanted, then going to the hospital right before it was time to deliver. I have never dwelled in a more sacred space than I did in that delivery room. I have never felt more powerful or focused in my life. And after all the labor and some pushing, I was handed the most perfect baby I’ve ever laid my eyes on.

Juxtaposed by a beautiful labor and delivery, were the days that followed. Sitting in the hospital room holding our newborn and just staring at them. I became so overwhelmed by how much I truly loved this tiny human we had been entrusted with. I looked over at my husband through many tears and said to him, “babe, why wouldn’t she want this?” Why didn’t my birth giver want THIS? Why didn’t she want to love me and protect me?

We having a running joke in our home, I often look at our infant and say, I would set this world on fire for you to protect you. And what’s the old saying? There is always truth in jest…. There is truth in that for me, there is nothing in this world I would not do to protect my precious baby. The thing that baffles me to my core, why every single parent does not feel that. I would lay my life down for my child and not even blink. But what cuts to the core for so many of us with wounded childhoods is the reality that our own parent(s) would not do the same for us.

Motherhood has been eye-opening for me. I’ve never pushed my body to the extreme than I did to bring this little one into the world. I’ve never felt things to the depth that I do now. My infant’s gummy little smile first thing in the morning is truly a delight to my soul, I see my future in their eyes and there is not one thing I wouldn’t do for my child. But it has been within this eye-opening that I have felt a magnifying glass on my own wounds. I see and feel how easy it is to love my baby, why wasn’t it easy for my own birth giver? Why didn’t she want THIS?!

I’ve come to realize that I can scream WHY until I am blue in the face, it won’t change her and it won’t ever prompt an answer to that question. So, I am choosing a redirect. Thank you God for the blessing of this precious little soul. Thank you for trusting me to love this child how you would want me to. Thank you that I get to be a mother. I surrender my own to you. I release my why’s and why not’s to you. I release myself from feeling like I was not good enough to be loved and accept that I have always been enough and no matter what, I will always be enough in the eyes of my Heavenly Father.

Friends, if you find yourself struggling with your own childhood wounds while working hard to ensure your own children do not have a childhood they need to heal from, I challenge you to remind yourself you are worthy of being loved and you are worthy of the same unconditional love you pour out for your own children. We cannot change our childhoods and we cannot change the people who hurt us, but we can work to change how we love ourselves while we heal.

I pray you find joy where there used to be pain. I pray you find peace where there used to be unrest. I pray you can and will accept that you have always been worthy of love.

There is strength in our healing, even if we don’t feel it in the moment.