The Mirror Goes Both Ways

I remember a woman once telling me that you’re only ever as happy as your most unhappy child. As if motherhood is a permanent tethering to someone else’s emotional weather. As if your own light simply becomes a function of theirs.

I rejected a lot of what I heard coming into motherhood. Not because I wanted to make anyone’s experience wrong — but because it simply didn’t feel like what I wanted to call in. And yet, arriving here at 51 with Chiara at 2½, I’ll be honest — it has brought up more than I anticipated to navigate.

What I didn’t expect was the mirror.

She catches everything. Not in a heavy, burdensome way — in an almost comedic, ruthlessly precise way. The moments I’m most off, most subtly disconnected from myself — covering over what’s actually happening in me with what I want to be happening — that’s exactly when she gets grumpy. Frustrated. Sideways. And we enter this little collision dance together.

Last night we were at a restaurant. Rory and I were exhausted. Chiara had eaten everything in sight… she’s in a growth spurt that seems to have no ceiling — and afterward I took her to the bathroom to wash her hands. What followed was a full sovereign standoff.

She needed to poop but absolutely refused to use the public toilet because, and I quote, it was gross. Which, fair. Her stomach hurt a little. She’d eaten so much. And I was done. Completely at my max. There may have been some firmness in my voice that I wouldn’t exactly put in a highlighted reel. ;)

She went.

But I exited that bathroom at capacity. Zero grace left in the tank.

And then this morning I sat on the rooftop in the quiet and meditated and watched the light and let myself come back to myself. And something I noticed… something I couldn’t have done when I was younger is that I didn’t make myself wrong for any of it. Not for the power struggle. Not for the firmness. Not for being a tired human in a restaurant bathroom on a Tuesday night with a tiny exhausted person who had opinions about toilets.

There’s a part of my awareness now that stays tethered to a higher truth even when I’m in the thick of it. Not above it — init, but held. And the softening always comes. With more grace and less time than it used to.

The mirror goes both ways.

She catches my low moments with her whole body. And she also pulls me, completely without effort, into full presence. Into spontaneity. Into that particular kind of joy that only arrives when you stop performing in any capacity and just show up. Playful. Expectant. Surrendered to whatever’s about to happen next.

That is the gift I did not read about in any of the books.

Tiffany Carole

^{Founder of the Lumina Guild ~ A place for those creating the extraordinary, together.}

^{Author of The Inner Nature of Essential Oils}

^{Creator of The Windows of the Sky}

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