Gardening notes.

I spent my life resenting my mom.

Depending on what year you asked me, she was a bitch, a victim, clueless, spineless, and completely unconscious.

Because in my reality, while I was living through some of the hardest years of my life, she was there. And she didn’t protect me.

For almost ten years, we didn’t speak. And I was perfectly fine with that.

Then, little by little, we got back in touch.

And every phone call could drain the hell out of me.

I had spent years untangling certain knots — fears, limiting beliefs, ways of seeing life that no longer belonged to me.

And she’d show up on the phone carrying huge bags full of all of it, like she wanted to dump them directly into my living room. 😂

I’d hang up thinking: Oh my God, Mom...

So when the idea came up for her to spend a few days at my house...

Oh yes. Excellent idea.

What could possibly go wrong? 😂

I knew she would arrive with her fears, her beliefs, her way of seeing life that can sometimes be miles away from mine.

But something had changed.

I no longer needed her to see the past exactly the way I did for my experience to be real.

So instead of trying to make her understand my reality, I became curious about hers.

I asked questions.

A lot of them.

And for the first time, I think I actually met my mother.

Not the mother I wished I’d had.

Not the one I had judged for years.

The woman.

And holy shit...

She had lived through hell too.

She had been afraid. She had been overwhelmed. She had made choices I wouldn’t have made. She had carried regrets for years.

And behind everything I had judged...

there was an enormous amount of love I had never been able to receive.

It doesn’t change what happened.

But it changed what I was able to see.

Two people can live through the same story without living the same reality.

And when I stopped needing her to step into mine... I finally had enough space to meet her in hers.

And then, something I couldn’t even have imagined started to grow.

We talked. We laughed. We discovered each other.

But more than anything, I saw her.

Not just as my mother.

I met this woman.

I found her beautiful. Strong. Impressive through everything she had lived through.

I had spent years running toward books, trainings, coaching, and personal development, only to find myself sitting across from a woman who had never opened a book about any of it in her life... and I recognized so many of my own roots in her.

And that, I truly never saw coming.

My whole life, whenever I looked in the mirror, I physically saw my mother. And because I rejected her, there was always a part of my own reflection that I rejected along with her.

Then suddenly, I found her beautiful.

I love her.

And something pretty delicious happened:

The love I was now able to give her came directly back to me.

And what still fascinates me is that all of this happened inside what had been one of the most difficult relationships of my life.

I didn’t fix anything.

I didn’t change the past.

I simply stopped pouring all my energy into what could no longer grow.

And that energy became available for something else.

Gardening Notes. 🌱

Ultimately, maybe that’s exactly what happened between us.

Space released.
I no longer needed every conversation to be about repairing the past, convincing her, or having my reality acknowledged.

Intention planted.
I hadn’t even gone into those days intending to change our relationship. I was simply there, open and curious to discover the woman in front of me.

Energy nourished.
The energy that had once gone into fighting, replaying, and resisting was now available for our conversations, our laughter, our curiosity, our love.

And possibility grew.

Within a few days, a relationship I wouldn’t even have known to ask for started growing right in front of me. 🌱

Kay 💛