This is a wonderful article from Kate Cole-Adams that I have found slightly late via The Rachel Papers:
My precious burden | theage.com.au.
I understood at last that I would never be free from this immense,
uncompromising love; that my chest had been cracked open down the
breastbone, as if with a cleaver; and that from now on my heart would
be naked; that every pain my child felt would be amplified in me; and,
worse, that I, in the selfish, thoughtless act of creating him, was
complicit in this pain, from which neither of us would ever be free.
...
We took comfort from the notion of the good-enough mother, whose job it is to meet some but not all of her child's needs, thereby encouraging her offspring, through strategic neglect, to become resourceful and self-confident. But we were only partly convinced. And I was not sure that my morning rants qualified as strategic.
...
We took comfort from the notion of the good-enough mother, whose job it is to meet some but not all of her child's needs, thereby encouraging her offspring, through strategic neglect, to become resourceful and self-confident. But we were only partly convinced. And I was not sure that my morning rants qualified as strategic.
