Looking Forward in Journal

to meeting an older woman who has a son the same age as ours and is also planning to homeschool with the rough curriculum I have in mind.
Talking to her the past couple of weeks has been… Inspiring. She shares a lot of the same interests, but she brings such a gentle, guiding motherly tone to the conversation that I can’t help but feel like there really is something the maternal woman has that is just so special and comforting. It is almost like a slap in the face, her gentleness and kind patience. It is a skill that I have genuinely never witnessed before.
It’s a reminder that my upbringing was harsh, rushed, and crude. And I feel somewhat ashamed that a lot of that has not just shaped me but been absorbed into my personality. I feel like a blundering teenager. And I remember so poignantly my yearning and pining for that maternal figure. For some real, feminine connection with a grounded, present woman who was not only willing to teach and nurture, but loved it. I feel the lack of my own experience- my own grief of being unmothered. And I doubt that my gains in self knowledge can ever really make up for that.
Perhaps that is true- I can never be someone who wasn’t unmothered. I can never be unbrutalized. But, I can recognize that these things did happen to me and work to become aware of their effects. Maybe more now than ever, is the opportunity to learn what it is that I lost.