Day 63 of 100 intentional reflective steps.
My house is full of teenagers. Their shoes have made a formidable pile by my back door. The crowd is one huge noisy amoeba, eating and drinking everything in its wake. They just burst into my room and begged my car off me to go to the grocery store and to look at Christmas lights. I love them. They are happy. I love that they love being in our house and enjoy themselves here. Their laughter is sunshine to me.
When I was a teenager I was not happy. Nobody wanted to come hang out at our house. It was intimidating and wrought with expectation of proper and pristine behavior. I was scared and depressed. I remember crying every day on the bus on the way home from school because I couldn’t stand the thought of going home where I felt trapped and everything smelled of fear. For months before I ran away from home and ended up in foster care I sat on the couch every day after school and cried or stared into nothingness; willing myself to die.
That is not the life we wanted for our kids. We wanted more for them. Mission accomplished.