Showing UP for Sophia: Good Thing
I knew next to nothing about the fathers of my children. All three of them. Third times the charm? In the sense that I‘m certain I’ll never have another baby with a man I barely know? Absolutely. Not only because I’m 44, but because I’m over the concept that I need to be with the father to be there for our child. We are. We will be. I’m trusting that John and I will show up for Sophia in the ways she needs, since we weren’t showing up for each other, which was unfair to us all.
Been here before, done it again. I know what usually happens... I get the kid and he and I hate each other, forever. As if that tactic worked with my first two children who have since confessed that I regularly crossed their boundaries by sharing too much, and rarely got consent from their fathers for making choices that concerned our children. Not this time.
I want to co-parent. I know I can be fair. With my moon in Libra, fairness rules my emotional makeup. But in the past, my victim mentality convinced me that I was “being fair” by playing the role of a mother as best I could. I did what societal conditioning has been selling us for centuries, that mothers are the ones who stay and nurture with a sixth sense - a mother’s intuition.
As if men don’t have intuition? While they’re often told that they don’t have emotions and shouldn’t show feelings, are we to believe that men don’t sense when something is off, right, or wrong? Especially when it comes to the well-being of their child? Wouldn’t they naturally want the best for them? Or is that merely a motherly concept? Of course not. Especially because I was a mother before I became a woman.
I was four when I learned boys like girls. Especially girls who went out of their way to be seen. At eight my mother told me that all men cheat, including my father who wasn’t sexually satisfied with his virginal bride. By the time I was eighteen, I was pregnant and single.
Decades later, the boys in my past never knew me. Most men didn’t either. When I got too loud or too real, they were gone. Each one calling me a “crazy bitch” upon departure. Every.single.one. I feared I was, until I took accountability of my attempts at pursuing love with people who only knew the pretend me and then blamed and shamed them for not accepting me. Me who? Yeah... crazy.bitch.
No mas. I’m ready to be the woman my children need by admitting what I tried to deny…
As a girl, I imagined the cookie-cutter story of falling in love, getting married, having babies, and staying happily ever after. But truth be told, my intuition tried to intervene. Anytime I talked about marriage, my stomach sank. Even when I grew to be a teenager and imagined committing to a relationship, it felt wrong. While it could’ve been fear of finding love like my parents, the sensations only increased over time. No man made the commitment I desired because I didn’t know how to commit to myself first.
I’m ready to date myself, to know my likes and dislikes, to find ways to encourage and support myself like the partner I was told I needed. Which is why the song “Good Thing” (Zedd & Kehlani) speaks to my sixth sense. The lyrics resonate. My soul gets it. Where others saw a “crazy bitch”, I finally see truth. I was crazy, for thinking I needed to be with anyone. I was a bitch, for hurting them whenever they left. Not anymore.
“‘Cause I already got a good thing with me.
Yeah, I already got everything I need.
The best things in life are already mine.
Don’t tell me that you got a good thing for me.”
To my babies’ daddies… it’s not too late to trust our intuitions and partner with each other to be the co-parents our daughters deserve. Let’s forget the status quo and do the good thing, for us all.