My Daughter Needed Me to Choose Better, So I Did - Tiny Buddha

"I was standing at the service bar, waiting for my drink order to be ready. The scent of steak fat clinging to my apron and infusing itself into my bra, while twenty-something servers around me whined about working on Mother's Day... yet I was the only mother working that night. I'd barely slept because I'd closed the restaurant the night before. My nine-year-old daughter had just told me she wished she were dead."

"Up until then, I thought I was protecting her. I fooled myself into thinking that there wasn't too much harm, because the yelling wasn't directed at her. That I could absorb the blows. That love was sacrifice. But kids don't learn from what you say. They learn from what you model. And I was modeling self-betrayal. Her stepfather's cruelty wasn't new. Neither was the exhaustion I carried in my bones from trying to patch over the cracks with routine and denial."

A mother worked a busy shift on Mother's Day, exhausted and smelling of steak fat, while servers complained and she was the only mother on duty. Her nine-year-old daughter told her she wished she were dead, prompting the mother to leave work to cry privately and realize that her life needed to change. The mother had believed yelling and sacrifice protected the child, but recognized that children learn from modeled behavior, not words, and that she was modeling self-betrayal. The daughter's collapse under pressure and the stepfather's cruelty forced the mother to confront the marriage and the need to change patterns to protect her child.

Read at Tiny Buddha