I once had the thought that I’d be the one to teach my children to wonder—to look at the moon and gasp, to sing with the birds as the sun rises then falls, to gallop and whoop with the ocean’s waves—now I know this is only something they can teach me.

The world is a wonderful thing through their eyes, to their reaching hands and stomping feet, to their heads filled with starry night skies.

They’ve taught me more in their wildness, in their abandonment of self–somehow done without betraying their very being, both bending towards the earth, towards each other, towards me–than I’ll teach them in a lifetime. This I am sure of.

Their light brightening up the dimness within me, from years of worry and care. From years of forgetting the wildness, the wonder I was born with, from betraying the amazement, from betraying myself.

They woken me up to the fight I now face as their mama, the one against my own tamed self, my own broken-in-ness, the fight to not be the one to tame them.

Yet I will be the one to show them how to face it–the brokenness of the world–and not let it break them, not completely. To show them how to not let the hardened world harden them. I will fight to stay soft and pliable and full of wonder, even in the dark. To shine the light one day when they stumble upon it themselves or it hits them in the face.

This wildness in them is bringing out the wildness in me—all three of us howling and yipping with delight, the joy of us being alive, being here, together, at the same time. What a sweet coincidence—that they are mine, that I am theirs.

*Originally seen on Instagram