i love having her in my life. someone i can talk to about all my crazy life experiences and views and she doesn't think i'm insane or wonder what on earth i'm talking about. she gets me, she knows me, she loves me.
i love being loved. i know that sounds pretty obvious, but i do. i'm sure everyone does, but i have a certain appreciation for it since i have been through so many times when i felt very unlovable or at the least, just not loved.
we talked about life, life as kids, life with kids, and about the couple of years where we didn't talk to each other. it's amazing where life takes you. there were years that i lived only a couple miles away from her, but we couldn't have been farther apart. now i live over 2,000 miles from her and we've never been so close. it's amazing how love can do that, span amazing distances and time like the mythical tesseract.
i love how we both have one the same general goals; not to do to our kids what was done to us. being raised with such a strict, emotionally abusive, unloving mom was so damaging on too many different levels to count. the way she stifled us and striped us of any sense of individuality and empowerment. we became these weak, lonely kids who grew up never knowing how to stand up for ourselves, say no, or even knowing who we really are or what we want for ourselves.
now as adults and mothers we have the same struggles, and we deal with most of the same issues. we constantly re-evaluate what we're doing in light of how we were raised. for example, sometimes i tell claudia to stop doing something, then i think for a minute and wonder why i thought she should stop. i realize that i only said stop because it was something my mom would have told me to stop doing. i have had to spend a lot of time thinking about what really matters to me, what is ok for my kids, and my sister does the same.
the one thing we know for sure, we don't want to have our kids grow up to talk about us the way we talk about our mom.
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