Dear kids,

I surrender to you. I am raising the white flag, I’m down on my knees begging for you to spare my life, and by life, I mean my sanity. I lay here, exhausted, beaten down, defeated and dirty, and I ask for you to accept my renunciation of power, and at the same time continue to accept me into your heart and mind.

By surrendering, I am not giving up. I am not abandoning my position. Conversely, this surrender is really just me delivering myself to you while my strength and faith are still intact.

You see, you and I have been at war and engaged in this power struggle for a while, and I have finally realized that I cannot win. With that realization has come the thinking that I actually don’t want to win anymore. Nope. It’s time for me to let go and to trust.

Let go of what, you ask?

My expectations of you.

My expectations of myself.

My expectations of the fulfillment of parenting.

My expectations of the challenges of parenting.

Trust what, you question?

Trust you are learning from and about, yourself, me and all of the people coming in and out of your lives.

Trust I am doing the best I can and what I am doing is good enough.

Trust some of the lessons I am tirelessly trying to impart upon you are being learned.

Trust you will learn so much more from the mistakes you make than from any lessons I could give.

Ok, I do surrender to you, but I am not raising that white flag from the floor or from my knees. I am surrendering to you as I stand here and look you in the eye because what I do want to teach you, and will continue to exemplify, is humble confidence, bravery and belief in one’s contentions.

Yes, I may be (very) tired and I may be harboring discouragement towards myself and you for any of the million parenting mistakes I made today which exacerbated your poor behavior or choices, but this passing of the power torch is not to be taken lately. Nope, not in the least.

What my relinquishment really signifies is my extremely fearless decision to stop living my life as a woman, wife and parent constantly feeling overwhelmed by life’s phases, and to give in to the beauty of our imperfections – yours, mine, and life’s.

To achieve fulfillment in life we must find (yep, you guessed it) balance — between what we have control over, what we don’t and what we shouldn’t.

So, kids, what I surrender to you all today is all of me – all of the love I have inside of me and all of my hopes and dreams that all of your hopes and dreams come true.

Take that and do with it what you will — which I know will be something truly great.

Love,

Mom

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