Being Rebecca: The Day I Realized The Grass Isn't Always Greener On The Other Side

I recently came across the poem above.

I wrote it during a very low time in my life.

My son and I had moved in to help my mom who had Emphysema. He was about 9 years old at the time, his own father had died the year prior.

Two days before Christmas she went into the hospital and fell in to a coma and died about a month later.

While she was in the hospital I had lost my job and the week after she died I found out the apartment we were living in with her was going to be turned into a condo. It was basically a tornado of activity that just kept getting bleaker.

It was a little while after my mom had died and by this point the electricity had been shut off but thankfully we still had water running even if it was cold.

At night I would drag Brayden out and we would sit on my neighbors step and steal their electricity and Wi-Fi so I could do my job hunting. I thought it was such a low point and had no idea it would get even lower.

I remember the moment I wrote this poem. We had the back door open to try to cool off the Florida heat that still existed in March. We were listening to the neighbors having some sort of party in their backyard.

The food smelled so good and everyone was talking and laughing and I remember looking over at my son and wanting desperately to give him that kind of life instead of the one he was experiencing.

My heart was hurting and so I began writing because it is medication to my soul.

And as I wrote these words out… I remember the pain, and the sorrow, but more than that I remember the intense feeling of gratitude as I looked at my boy. Because I realized that really he was all that mattered.

I was blessed to be this boy’s mother and his life was and is such a gift to me.

We had nothing… but each other and a TON of love between us, Is there really anything more important than that?

Children are such a blessing. They are a light in our life when our bulb seems to have burnt out.

They are our hope when we think we haven’t a drop left… and they are so unconditionally loving that we are changed forever by their mere presence in our life.

Things really sucked right then… but not a drop of it really mattered.

Because when I looked at my son I felt like the luckiest human on the planet.

He’s all grown up now… and lots of things have changed…. Except for that one precious truth… that because of him my life is truly blessed.

And I hope that wherever each of you are today… you will take a moment to squeeze your children and remember what is on the other side of the fence cannot even touch the gold that you have right in your own home… regardless of the storm that is swirling around you.

Xoxoxo

Rebecca B
www.rebeccabworld.com