What I Was Afraid of Wasn't Only That She Was Hurting
That day, watching my baby cry as if her heart were breaking, a thought surfaced in me:
Sometimes what hurts us isn’t only the thing happening in front of us.
It’s the self we’re afraid to face behind it.
A few days ago, a small wound appeared on the baby’s skin.
I thought it would be better to deal with it while she was little than to let her face the pain when she was older.
But when we tried to treat it, she cried terribly.
In that moment, her dad and I both panicked.
We had meant to protect her, and instead it seemed we had put her through pain.
For days afterward, I kept checking and rechecking:
Did we handle it the right way?
Should we keep treating it?
Should we have gone to the hospital sooner?
On the surface, I was worried about the wound.
But later I found that what I really couldn’t set down wasn’t the wound itself.
It was a deeper question:
“If my judgment caused my baby harm, does that make me a mother who isn’t good enough?”
Once that question surfaced, I began to see things I had never noticed before.
What I was afraid of wasn’t only her pain.
What I was afraid of was this:
that I might become the kind of parent who once hurt me.
Some of what I lived through as a child taught me that a parent’s careless words and choices can leave a very deep mark.
So after becoming a mother, I wanted so much to do better.
I wanted to give her a safe, warm place to grow up in.
Sometimes I even catch myself thinking:
if I try hard enough, can I spare her that pain altogether?
But in one of those conversations with myself, I suddenly saw:
maybe I’m not only protecting the baby in front of me.
I’m also protecting the little girl I used to be.
The one who longed to be understood, accepted, treated gently.
When the baby cries, it’s as if that little girl is frightened too — as if an old pain has just been brushed again.
That’s why this touched such a sore place in me.
And then I noticed something interesting.
If I stood on my baby’s side and looked at myself:
Would I want a person like this to be my mother?
I think I would.
Because she reflects.
She learns.
She grieves when she causes hurt.
And she keeps being willing to adjust herself.
But back in the mother’s seat, I always feel:
“Not good enough.”
“It could still be more perfect.”
As if only a mother who never makes a mistake deserves to be called a good mother.
Slowly, though, I’ve come to understand:
maybe a child doesn’t need a mother who never makes mistakes.
She needs a mother who, after making one, is willing to repair, and to reconnect.
This also made me rethink something:
Can our love for someone, when we’re too afraid of losing them, turn into another form of control?
We want to protect a person.
So we keep trying to predict every risk, avoid every mistake, hold every outcome in our hands.
But life itself doesn’t seem to grow that way.
A child needs more than protection.
She needs room.
She needs to live through things.
She needs to grow her own strength in an imperfect world.
And maybe what parents can do isn’t to block every storm for her.
It’s to stay with her when the storm comes, and to keep believing in her.
What this taught me:
Growing up isn’t becoming someone who never gets anything wrong.
It’s still choosing love, after finding out you’re not perfect.
I’m still learning to be a mother.
And still learning to be a freer person.
Only this time, I saw it:
so often, what I’m afraid of isn’t the thing in front of me.
It’s the question behind it, the one I keep trying to answer —
“Am I good enough yet?”
Maybe every one of us has, at some moment, worked to prove our own worth.
Worked to be a better child, a better partner, a better parent.
But if one day we stopped chasing perfection,
would we still believe
that we are worth loving?