Forgiving Your Mom Starts with Forgiving Yourself

Divorcing the patterns of conservative, homeschool, full-quiver mothering

I have a friend, a mom friend, who is going through a divorce. She is a similar age to my mother when she went through hers and her kids are a similar age to what I was when my parents divorced and their community is similar to the one we found ourselves in all those years ago as we tried to navigate our way through the unthinkable and unknowable.

Last week she says to me she messed up in a conversation with one of her adult children—in this unthinkable and unknowable journey. I pause, let her grief linger for a minute, and then I say, “Friend, you are not going to get this right. This is not a game of chess where if you play it perfectly, you’ll win. This is life and not the life any of you envisioned at this juncture, and all you can do is meet the moment with humility and faith and ask Jesus, ‘Help.’ And even then, you will fail or you will be perceived to fail or you will disappoint or be disappointed. This is how faith goes, groping blindly in the dark, trusting there is good to be found.”

A few weeks ago I was sick or sad or something and I read someone saying Welcome to Plathville would be a good waste of time. It’s a Dugger-esque show, a family with a bunch of tow-headed, sheltered kids living on a farm in south Georgia. The twist is this: they can’t keep up the charade, and one by one the kids shed the homeschool haircuts and denim skirts, and experience the world with all its beauty and brokenness.