If She Were Here: Journal Prompt 2

From mom to me: how can i better support you in achieving your goals?

This question stopped me.

This is a blog series where I go there each of the prompts inside Just Between Mom & Me — the journal I created, the one that exists because of her, the one I never got to fill out with her. So I'm answering it the only way I can now. Honestly. Out loud. As if she can hear me.

She can.

My mom was my angel on earth before she became my angel in heaven.

She had her struggles. She had her challenges. Addiction was a constant presence in my childhood — hers, and my dad's. I grew up fast. I learned to take care of people before I learned to take care of myself. My mom, my dad, my sister. I was the one holding things together in a house that was always on the edge of coming apart. My dad was mean when he drank. He was meaner when he got sober. My mom loved me with everything she had — I never doubted that — but love and consistency aren't always the same thing.

I built my life around the ideals I chose in spite of all of it. Not because of bitterness. Because I decided early that I would be different. That I would build something. That I would matter.

She knew that about me, actually. She always said I would only ever do exactly what I wanted to do. And she wasn't wrong.

But here's what I needed her to say that she didn't say enough:

I believe in you.

When I went back to college, she told me I wouldn't finish.

She probably doesn't remember saying it. She would deny it if I brought it up. But I remember. Those words have lived in me longer than I'd like to admit — sitting right next to every goal I've set, every risk I've taken, every moment I've wondered if I was enough to pull this off.

She also used to say — when I talked about my dreams, my plans, my future — "Oh, you can always just marry rich."

I hated that.

Not because it came from a bad place. It didn't. It came from a woman who had her own wounds, her own ceilings, her own version of what safety looked like for her daughter. But I wasn't built for that kind of safety. I was built to create. I was built to lead. I am smart. I am an entrepreneur. I have always known that about myself even when no one was saying it back to me.

What I wanted — what I still want when I close my eyes and imagine her sitting across from me — was for her to look at me and say:

You are going to do something incredible. I believe in you. I always have.

She passed in December 2020.

In May 2021, I walked across a stage and accepted my BBA in Entrepreneurship.

She didn't see it. Or maybe she saw all of it.

I choose to believe the second thing.

Because here's what I know about my mom now that she's gone:

She is still showing up for me.

I feel her around me. Not in a distant, abstract way. In specific, undeniable ways that I can't explain and stopped trying to. She is my angel now the same way she was my angel on earth — imperfect, full of love, doing the best she can with what she has.

I believe she had something to do with the night I met my husband. Something about that evening felt important from the very beginning — like it was already written. Like someone who loved me had already arranged the room.

I believe she was near the Humane Society the day I walked in and found Dasher. Because the comfort he brings me is the specific kind of comfort I used to find in her.

I believe Caring Catalogs is her fingerprints on my life. Because I built it in her memory. Because the conversations this journal is trying to start are the conversations I wish we had finished.

So when this prompt asks: How can you better support me in achieving my goals?

My answer is this:

Mom, you can keep doing what you're doing. Keep sending me signs I can't ignore. Keep showing up in the moments that matter. Keep being the angel you always were, just without the limitations that life put on you.

And if you can — if you're reading this from wherever you are — I need you to know something.

I finished. I finished very well actually.

I finished college. I built the business. I married someone wonderful. I found a dog who makes me grateful every day. I created something with your name woven into every page.

You didn't get to say I believe in you the way I needed to hear it.

But I think maybe you've been saying it all along.

I'm finally learning to hear it.

Just Between Mom & Me is a guided pass-back-and-forth journal for mothers and their children — for the conversations that are hard to start out loud. If this resonated with you, it was written for you.

Shop Just Between Mom & Me →