Dear Jade Ruthven,
I wanted to drop a line and tell you how happy I am
that you love your baby so much.
In a world full of disagreements, petty arguments, celebrity worship,
hateful politics, parenting faux pas, and general disregard for other people’s
feelings, I wanted to let you know how refreshing it is to see a mother so
enthralled in her baby, that she can’t help but scream it out to social
media. If you had a mountain readily
accessible to you, I know you’d be on it screaming. I know, because I’d be on it too. Like you, I am guilty of oversharenting. Even on the bad days, like today, when my car
repair man called to tell me my car was done forever, or last week when my ex
got engaged, or the day I brought my baby home and didn’t think I could do this
parenting thing all by myself: in those moments, I still would have climbed
that mountain and screamed my love out from it. We’re
the kind of people that wake up in the morning, surprised at the amount of love we
have left in us despite the way the world desperately tries to suck it out.
Jade, I do not believe that there is a limit to how much
we’re supposed to love people, especially the ones we make. The first time they handed me my baby, I
swore up and down I could never love anyone that much ever again. I’ve been breaking that promise every day
I’ve been blessed to wake up, since.
Perhaps technology just hasn’t caught up to us, yet.
We’re the kind of people that, years ago, would have carried pictures in our
wallets, pulling them out and trading them empathetically like baseball cards with our neighbors.
While exchanging stories of our loved ones, inside were secretly and impatiently waiting for our turn to speak (not necessarily to brag, but) to remind the universe that despite our existence
full of microwaveable meals, depressing news segments, reality TV and broken down cars, our children are
something to be proud about.
That’s something worth sharing.
Cheers,
Abigail (a fellow over-sharing parent)
