The Softening I Didn’t Know I Needed

The other day, I was in one of those deep, unexpected conversations, the kind where someone says something that lands in your chest before your mind can even catch up.

They said to me, “You felt hard. Your boys softened you.”

And I felt that. Really felt it.
Because the truth is… I did build a hardness around myself. Not because I wanted to, but because life taught me to.

Every man I met either needed something from me, wanted something from me, or eventually left.

And those moments, the giving, the losing, the reshaping, stacked up over time. So I learned to protect myself, to carry everything on my own shoulders, to lead with strength even when softness was what I craved.

Between my boys and my husband, I learned something I didn’t know I needed:

that love can be gentle, dependable, and safe.

Motherhood.

My boys entered my world with this unbelievable softness that I didn’t even know how to hold at first.

They didn’t want anything from me except for me to just be their mom.
They didn’t expect me to earn love.
They didn’t treat my tenderness like a weakness.

They just loved me… fully, freely, consistently.
And that kind of love gently chips away at every wall you thought you needed to survive.

Some days, I catch myself realizing:

They didn’t just make me a mom.
They brought me back to myself.
They softened the edges I thought were permanent.

They reminded me that love can be safe.
That softness isn’t something to hide, it’s something to grow into.

So yes… I was hardened once.
Life did that.

But my boys? They softened me in the most beautiful, unexpected way.

And I think a lot of us moms feel that…
That our kids show us a version of ourselves we didn’t even know still existed - a gentler one, a warmer one, a hopeful one.

Motherhood didn’t just change me.
It healed me in places I never talked about.

🤍🫶🏼