I never knew how hard it would be on my Mommy heart to leave my children for more than a few hours. You think it wouldn't be as hard as it is for me, since my girls are 5 and 7 and I have left them once before overnight but something about this was harder.
My 5-year-old is now old enough to rationalize why I shouldn't go. She is able to look me in the eye, with her eyes filled with tears and beg me not to leave her. That's an almost unrecoverable blow.
She has spent almost the entire time that I have known about this trip ( a couple weeks) trying to talk me out of it. I've tried explaining that its only for a couple days and I am doing it because of a work commitment and a promise to a friend, but she doesn't understand. She only knows that, "It's not right when you are not here, Mommy."
I've almost said to hell with the whole thing a couple of times because, nothing is worse than breaking her heart. Heaven forbid something bad were to happen, she may never recover but I have to teach her that sometimes Mommies have to leave for work but we always come back.I never knew it would hurt so badly to tell her no, when she so honestly was begging me to stay. For once, the begging is not about a toy, or candy or something inconsequential; it is about her Mommy staying with her; the very unspoken promise that I have made to her at birth.
People have to travel for business or even just for some time for themselves because, after all, before we were mothers, we were people. Those women still live inside of each of us.
I want to be everything to my girls and I never want to be the reason that they are disappointed or sad. I never want to let them down but I want to teach them these things 1) that mommies can leave but we always come back and they are always with us in our hearts 2) That we all need to respect and honor our commitments to work and promises to friends 3) that even if you are a mommy and you love your kids more than everything, sometimes you have to do things that are just for you.
Life is too short for mommy guilt so even though all I keep seeing is my sweet daughters' faces willing me not to leave, I must go. I will be back and I think it will be great for all of us. I love these girls more than words can ever know and if they only knew how very hard it is to leave them, they'd know that it's harder on my heart than it is on theirs.
Image via The TRUTH about Motherhood
