This is for the broken mama. For the tired, the weary, the chewed up and spit out and cracked up into pieces of us that is just trying to hang on with our fingernails and a prayer.
It gets better.
I know you don’t believe me, you can’t hear that even right now, maybe the words don’t even make sense the way they don’t when something is said so often that it starts to jumble altogether into something different, unrecognizable, a little grotesque. And yet, I will say it again:
It gets better.
I will say it louder, I will jump up and down, a cheerleader with my pom poms and parts of my soft middle-aged body shaking long after I’ve landed. I do this for you because I want you to know:
It gets better.
I will drop to my knees on your bathroom floor, meet you where you are, bend and whisper it into your ear where you lie, maybe brush your hair for you while I’m there:
It gets better.
You see, I know this because I’ve been there. I’ve been there so often my butt’s worn a groove in there’s couch and they save my spot because yes, I will be back again. It’s in my blood or maybe it’s my temperament or maybe it’s the way the world has these days of wrapping itself around us and shaking our soft middle-aged bodies until all that’s left is the chill of bare bones and quiet desperation.
And I’ve lied on the bathroom floor myself and I’ve prayed and I’ve cried and eventually I’ve quieted enough to hear that soft still voice—maybe it was yours?— reminding me:
It gets better.
And it does and it did and I’m upright and breathing and one foot in front of the other-ing again, marching alongside all the rest of the survivors, saving your spot.
Because it gets better.
Promise.
Originally published on Liz Petrone