Inheritance

I inherited the sork,

my grandmother, mother, sister and now me.

I avoided the sork.

I didn't want it a heavy weight to carry, and I cry far too easily.

I inherited this work, love and strength, pain and trauma.

I wonder what we inherit from our families. Wonder what we carry and what we can choose to put down.

Last week after a court a mom texted me, what's triple customary adoption, will I still get to see my son

when this mom was a child herself, my mother tried to help her parents. Generation after generation, the pattern continues. Parents, familiar and unfamiliar, bear themselves before us to get their children back.

My heart feels for them. My own daughter is too. She is a regular old Daredevil, chatty, Cathy, pushing limits, learning boundaries, sometimes testing mine.

And yet I would do anything, change, anything, be anything to protect her. I think most parents would, and yet, some don't. Some will. Some can't put down their pain, their addiction. Some only when their chances past. Some never show up. Their children never learn their faces.

I wonder what these kids will inherit. I wonder who they'll choose to be.

Working in this job has taught me that my daughter will inherit things from me, and I want them to be the good things, the love, the culture, the kindness life has to offer, all the great things I inherited from my mother and she from hers.

Motherhood has become my mission to be the best I can for her, to show up every day for her,

and in my job, I try my best to help other parents show up for their kids in the ways they deserve

and if they can't, to find them safe homes, safe guardians to love them, pray they'll inherit something good instead.