I do not love raising a 13 year-old.

Thoughts on prayer beads, hormones, and hoping.

I do not love raising a 13-year-old girl. Yet.

I’m sure I’ll find myself windswept with pride someday, as she twirls and blasts past me. So full and bright and alive, she is, I’ll smile. I’ll nudge the person next to me, that’s my girl.

But today, it’s not great. And when I say “not great” I mean “what the actual fuck?”.

It would be impossible to even recount the morning to you because her father and I were taken on a journey with too many whip-fast turns to count. By 8 am we were miles deep, lost in a deep dark forest of teenage angst, shame, and melancholy.

All I knew to do was pray on the drive to school with her.

The potholes on 12th Ave meant that the prayer beads dangling from the rearview mirror of the red sedan in front of us had a particularly active ride. I remember noticing it, which—looking back—is strange given my level of dissociation. How many things go unnoticed when we’re lost in the woods?

My mother tried as hard as she could to raise me; she loved me deeply. And: she was given a shitty toolbox. She was also given a daughter who died of pediatric brain cancer and a deeply traumatized lineage. It was hell living with her.

Now I may have CPTSD with a pinch of BPD, but I am far from hell. What would my life look like if I had had 50% of the foundation on which my children stand? They are so equipped to handle so much more than I was, am! Thank you, God.

All I know to do is pray. So we pray.

God, Lucy is having a gnarly morning and feeling big things. Please help her hold them today. Please open the windows of her heart so that those feelings and stories can fly out as easily as they fluttered in. Please put some wonderful things in her day, and help her find the courage and grace to see the beautiful things that are already here. “Lucy” means “bright.” Help her feel her brightness today. She is a star, help her remember she is a star.

The sedan driver reaches up and maneuvers the beads off the mirror and slips them on, I see through the dusty rear window.

I wonder what prayers she’s praying.

“Have a good day, Sweetie. I love you.” Through the GAP cropped, fleece half-zip I feel her bony arm. It was inside of me thirteen years ago, it was inside of my mom as my ovum in utero. And so on.

Beads.

Lineage.

Hope.

Hard work.

Prayer.

It was hell, it isn’t anymore. My children—my daughters—are forging a stronger, sturdier, better bead. A better quality of life. Isn’t that the point? To keep thumbing as lovingly and honestly through each day the way one glides along those strands? To work hard and hope that, as a parent, you’re giving something better than you were given?

How active we must look, dangling from the mirror, bouncing around on the impossible realities in which we exist! Flailing and hoping that we’ve done some “right” things. I believe we have.

I believe we have.