On Valentine’s Day, my son gave me a card. A simple piece of paper on which, with his tiny hands, he had written: “I love you, even when you yell at me. I love you, no matter what.” He read it aloud in his cheerful voice, as if he hadn’t just spoken a truth that made my knees buckle. He looked at me for a few seconds, waiting for me to say something, but all I could do was stare at those words, hearing my heartbeat pounding in my ears.
“I love you, no matter what.”
That’s what I always tell my kids. Over and over, making sure it sinks in: that no matter who they are or what they do, my love for them will never disappear. There is nothing in this world they could do to make me love them less, just as there is nothing they could do to make me love them more. And now, those words were being handed back to me, like a reflection in a mirror.
“I love you, no matter what.”
It was hard to hear that from my own child. Hard to accept that “no matter what” without feeling like I was collapsing under its weight. Because in those words, I heard every failure laid bare. This little boy of mine sees the exact moments when I am not the mother I want to be, and yet, he chooses to love me. And that hurts. Images flooded my mind. My sharp tone that morning when I rushed him to get dressed.
His downcast eyes when I lost my patience at the table. The way he flinched when my voice rose, too loud, too harsh, too cold. And now, his gaze, warm, honest, reaching for me like a small hand stretched out over an abyss.
“I love you, no matter what.”
The card trembled in my fingers. I didn’t want there to be a “no matter what”. I didn’t want to give him reasons to say that. I didn’t want his love to have to rise above my yelling, my impatience, my exhaustion.
I didn’t want him to have to love me despite my shortcomings.
I wanted to earn love, to deserve it, like I always had, since I was a child. My whole life, I had worked for love: by being good, obedient, well-behaved, getting good grades, excelling, having a respectable job. It had worked so hard for it! But now, I was the one who wasn’t working. And that meant I wasn’t worthy of love.
He tugged at my sleeve gently. “Do you like it, Mommy?” I nodded and pulled him into a tight hug, silent, my jaw clenched. He grinned and went back to playing, as if nothing had happened. As if he hadn’t just sent my heart into a storm.
I sat there, holding the card, his words pounding in my chest, fighting to make room between my guilt and my shame. Shame and guilt for all the times I thought no one was watching. For all the times I believed love had to be earned by being smart, kind, patient, good. For not knowing that this is what true love is. And that it doesn’t come only from me.
My child loved me even when I didn’t deserve it. He loves me. I am his whole world. I am not just the sum of my mistakes, like I am for myself. Even though I sometimes hurt him, he also sees in me someone who is not afraid to ask for forgiveness, to admit her mistakes, the one who tries with everything in her to be better for him. He doesn’t love me because I make him pasta with tuna fish, his favorite, or because I wake him up with kisses and cuddles. He doesn’t love me only in the moments when I see him, hear him, feel his little soul. He loves me without conditions. And this truth, both shatters me and heals me at the same time.
Burnout and Long Covid, have taken so much from me: my energy, my sleep, the joy of simply being with my family without counting the minutes until my next break. They have replaced my patience with chronic exhaustion, from which harsh words sometimes slip out. They have stolen my ability to be fully present, leaving behind only a shadow of the mother I once dreamed of being.
But there is one thing they haven’t been able to take.
My child’s love.
So yesterday, on Valentine’s Day, I didn’t just receive a card. I received a painful truth, a lesson in love, and maybe even another chance. It doesn’t mean that tomorrow I won’t yell at my kids anymore, though I wish for that more than anything. But I want this realisation to change something in me. To make me be even more aware. To understand what’s left after I yell. How to repair. How to make sure that my children feel that I love them, too, even when, even if, I yell.