she called me a lioness

motherhood.

i have so many thoughts on it, and i have so rarely attempted to sum them up, but i feel as if i should try now. i should also be in bed, as i need to leave for the airport in 5 hours, but alas. here we are.

a lioness.

i've been called a lioness before, though not to my face. a dear friend told my daughter, "your mommy is a lioness and she takes care of and protects and loves you so much," or something similar. at the time, it put a smile on my face because... well, why wouldn't it? it's common knowledge that the lionesses are the bad asses of the pride; the lions just hang around, make babies, and eat. the ladies get work done. seems like me in a nutshell.

that comment was delivered to my two year old daughter. but the reality is that i was a lioness before i had kids. i was a lioness when i was eighteen and moved out with 2 days notice to my mother. i was a lioness when i was in 1st grade and awoke to find a man's hands and mouth on me and instead of cowering away, i made a fist and punched at him. i was a lioness when i was eight and refused to go to my father's for christmas vacation because we were lacking a relationship (i lacked the words to say that; he brought a sheriff and pried me off of my mother's lap). when i was in fourth grade and my mother's migraines meant i had to fend for food on my own. when i was eighteen and continued to work with the guy who ripped my heart into eight thousand pieces and stomped on them for good measure, and did it with a smile on my face. i was a lioness when i was twenty-one in downtown austin and my very drunk, very petite friend was unable to walk and a man literally attempted to carry her off to do god only knows what with her, and i stepped in and stopped him.

i was a lioness because i had to be. i was a lioness because - and this is something i have struggled with admitting - i lacked the protection i should have had, as a child. i was a lioness because my spine had to be made of iron, my mind had to be strong, my skin had to be tough, all from a very young age. I grew into a lion because of a little thing called self-preservation.

so yes, i was and am a lioness, to a certain degree. it's not quite what makes me happiest about myself.

i have two children and a husband, and i love them with all the energy i can muster. this is normal. expected. but they are the beginning of the tale of what makes me happiest about myself and so we begin with them.

my husband is handsome and kind and intelligent, the holder of a dry humor and a protective streak a mile wide, which he wrapped around me ever-so-gently from the moment we met. he is the best man i have ever known. he showed me how to be less tough, a bit softer. less critical, more trusting.

my husband and i have created two of the most remarkable small people the world will ever know. our daughter is an artist in almost every medium. she writes, she paints, she reads, she sketches, she colors, she crafts. she is kind and joyful. she is sensitive. she is beautiful. our son is tiny, a newborn still, but smiles easily. laughs easily. brings joy with him everywhere. he is beautiful.

and it is through the shared love of these children and my husband that i have felt myself change, felt certain hardened edges slough off and become something entirely new. it is through the love i hold for them, down to my core, with every cell of my being, that i have changed, a butterfly emerging from a cocoon, if you'll pardon the analogy.

i am soft-hearted.

i am soft-hearted, and not afraid to be vulnerable in the right circumstances, and i am ok with having emotions that are not coated in confidence and i have accepted that this gentleness that resides inside of me defines many of my thoughts and actions. oh, make no mistake: i'm still very direct, sometimes too much so. but at my core, it's this quiet thing that lives and breathes.

my family has taught me how to stop this world from hardening the heart within my chest. it's through the deep-seated feelings i have for them that i have learned to love so, so hard. it's through the bone-deep love i have for them that i have learned that you can love others deeply, too; that friends can be family, that life is meant to be shared, that you can let others pick you up when you feel too weak to walk.

and it's only when you love that hard, that deeply, that much, that you yearn to protect. that's the thing i was lacking as a child: that kind of love to define the key relationships in my life. and i am overjoyed to know that my children will never know that life. that my husband and i are breaking that cycle for our kids. that, in some way, my friends will never know that life.

and that protection that i can offer - the love and care that i can offer - is what makes me a lioness more today than i ever was before. because now, instead of self-defense, i protect out of deep-seated affection. now, i hold them in my hands and hold them up and hold them to me when they need it. now, i cry over movies and stupid state farm commercials and out of exuberant pride when my daughter has not one but five pieces in her school's art show and when my son stretches out across his dad's legs and falls asleep and when i have to hug my husband goodbye in the mornings and when my friends tell me they're having babies or they're stepping outside of their comfort zone and applying for that job or ending that relationship or doing a thing that scares them and yes, when E.T. points and says, 'ouch.'

it's through the gentleness, the silky softness of vulnerability, that i feel i am truly a lioness: willing to protect and persevere all at once.

and i wouldn't have it any other way.