Cherished.

This is a really (really) weak first attempt at a weekly writing prompt called Five Minute Friday. I’m hesitant to post it as this is all I came up with in five whole minutes of pondering a single word. As I wrote previously, I used to love to write but my self-confidence in this area (especially when in the company of people who are actually paid for their words and do their job eloquently!) is virtually non-existent, so it’s not nearly as much fun anymore.

At any rate, here it is in all of its glory. Hopefully I’ll keep at it and the weeks to come will be better!

Cherished.

I have a hard time with this word. It sends me into a place of thinking about my own childhood and also thinking about my son’s childhood. I did not feel cherished growing up….will he when he gets to be my age? I can wax poetic about how cherished he is. That even when I’m so exasperated and frustrated and tired and fed-up that my anger gets the best of me, he is still cherished. He is cherished when he’s being cherish-able and he is cherished when he’s being not so cherish-able. But how do I convey that to him? How do I help him to know that no matter what, his momma loves and always will love him?

I feel like I spend a lot of time pondering and regretting my own childhood. I don’t know if it’s a rite of passage into parenthood to think about how you yourself were raised, but I have done it often. I hate throwing myself pity parties, even though it probably seems that I do. But I can’t help but be sad about the fact that I wasn’t the cherished daughter I always wanted to be. I have very little go on in terms of giving him the gift of feeling cherished. How do you do that?

It’s funny that the first place my mind went to when I saw the prompt was him and myself. Not a cherished item or a cherished memory. Cherished and uncherished people. I wonder what kind of psychological explanation I can get from that.

Cherished memories. Maybe that’s the key to making him feel cherished?