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“Every time you tell your daughter you yell at her out of love you teach her to confuse anger with kindness which seems like a good idea till she grows up to love men who hurt her cause they look so much like you.”
This is an excerpt from Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur. When I came across that poem I stilled for a few minutes. The depth of the words needed more than five seconds to grasp.
And I wish I had read the little book earlier, way before I had had a daughter. Because I have yelled many times. And in those times, unknowingly, I might have planted seeds.
Seeds that I shouldn’t have. But time has taught me something else too. That we don’t know what we don’t know. That as a parent, you will make so many mistakes. Just don’t let them doubt your love as a mother.
What you can do is to seek to be a better mother than you were yesterday. And like Maya Angelou said ‘when you love better, you do better.’
When you make a mistake, and become aware of it, apologizing to your child is the next thing to do. They learn from your actions, and they know apologising is a show of strength, not weakness.
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