It can be hard to express your feelings as a parent sometimes. Not so much because parents are expected to bottle up their emotions but because the emotions that come with being a parent can be so overwhelming and complex. It’s a rush of a million feelings: love, joy, fear, absurdity, exhaustion, responsibility, motivation, and primal attachment.
No one prepared you for any of this . . . and it’s unlike anything you’ve ever dealt with before. How do you express it? How do you let your family know what they mean to you? How they have you wrapped around their finger, how they are your everything? Maybe this exchange from The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse will suffice.
“Sometimes I want to say I love you all,” says the mole, “but I find it difficult.”
“Do you?” says the boy.
“Yes, so I say something like I’m glad we are all here.”
I’m glad we are all here. Isn’t that the perfect way to capture how you feel? Joy and gratitude that you’re together, that this is happening. That’s something to be glad about. That you have each other. That we’re all here, right now, despite it all.