What Love Looks Like

I haven’t seen my teenage daughter in three and a half months.

This was my choice.

I sent her to live with her biological father because we were stuck in what seemed to be a broken and abusive dynamic, and I wanted it to change and I wanted to heal.

For me, at this time, this is what love looks like.

At other times I likely would have been the one saying:

“You don’t just get to give up on your daughter!”, or
“Daughters need their mothers!”, or
“That man she’s now with is a narcissist and he will send only her messages of conditional love!”

But this time, none of those thoughts looked like love to me.

They looked like the same old thing, empty platitudes and excuses for not making the bold decision to shake it up.

Shake up the hurtful dynamic, and then try to begin again in love.

People have told me:

I am being incredibly selfish.
I am giving up on my daughter.
I have forever lost the opportunity to have a relationship with my daughter.

This was the hardest thing I have ever done.

Other parents, other moms who should have held my hand through this instead felt the need to tell me I am wrong and also pretty terrible. I was at the end of my rope, my girl was off the rails, and I was making a shift to save both of us.

We missed Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s. I know we only get so many rotations around the sun and I missed a big part of one of these spins with my girl. This did not feel like indulgence for me, it felt like sacrifice.

But I am playing the long game and I want our relationship to be honored and cared for by both of us. And sometimes you need a reset.

This is what love looked like for me and my daughter at this moment in time. It looked like separate countries.

She is still my daughter and I am still her mother and that still, for better or worse, defines us both. But right now, separate countries.

If that is something you could never imagine yourself doing or something that feels totally wrong to you – cool. That is not what love looks like for you at this time.

However, I would invite you to zip it, lock it, put it in your pocket. Parents need to stop telling each other they are doing it wrong. We do. Just stop. Seriously, I mean it.

There are a quadrillion right ways to raise kids, or be married, or live your own damn life.

Just assume everyone else is doing it right. Everyone else has different baggage and values and methods and restrictions and expectations and abilities and extended families and school and cultures and… everything. We all have families made of different ingredients. Love looks different for everyone.

But, if you look closely enough, it still looks like love.