Only 30% of us say I love you everyday.
I don’t need a reason to miss my Mum. But normally there is a trigger, a niggle about something I wish I could tell her, share with her, ask her. Today I was niggling, so I wrote this down…
I guess I just want to really know what it was like to be my Mum. To be able to ask your advice as a parent. To know the advice is tailored to me, and your knowledge of me alone. There are so few people who know you like you know your own child. As I face new things with my children I try to imagine how you felt, facing them myself makes me wish I could thank you for facing them for me, with me. The relationship I have with you now is so different to having a mum who is still here. I have to fill in all the blanks by asking others, guess work and reasoning.
Thanks for all you did, the unravelling I do I know is testament to how well you did it. I love you.
Later I watched this video from French Fashion brand Verdaubet, about their language of love campaign. I fully admit I had a totally different post in my head for this, but it suddenly tied in with all the emotions I felt today. This is from the heart. The video made me want to tell a few people how much I love them.
I think I do say I love you every day, to the dog, to my family as each goes to bed, but I don’t always use it at the times when the recipients really need it. What about you?
Would we all feel happier if we tried on a little more French style and spontaneously told people we loved them?
Earlier today my daughter was screaming up the stairs. ‘Not now!’ I shouted, ‘This is an emergency’. My email had been hacked.
‘I have an emergency,’ she said, and proceeded to tell me my son had fed the dog sweets.
‘That’s not an emergency,’ I bellowed down the stairs.
She started to cry.
So I stopped, held her, and said ‘I love you’. Told her what I was doing and why. And she let me get on with it, even offered to get the naughty hackers for me.
We all just need to know we are loved. Three little words.
I’m off to phone my wonderful Dad. Who have you told you love this week? Today? Or do you have other ways to make people feel loved.
19/10/2014 9:24 am
Oh that made me very teary. I wish I’d told my Mum I loved her before she was dying, only told her when she probably could no longer hear me. I tell my daughters I love them everyday, and they me. It’s harder to tell other people because its not part of the agreed everyday language, I’d find that very difficult I think. Lovely post x
19/10/2014 10:38 am
Oh @Jean Hearing is the very last sense to go, so chances are, she heard you.
19/10/2014 11:36 am
Lovely post Penny. I try and tell my children I love them every day….i think it’s so important. x
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19/10/2014 4:00 pm
Not often enough, definitely would be my answer, it’s never enough really is it? To have a gap, that’s so fundamental, must hurt so much, I can even imagine. Sometimes I do wonder how I would cope, and I think dreadfully, even though I think I’m a bit a loner for the most part, it’s that fundamental needing to be loved, and give love that’s so important in life. Bit of a tangent, but just what I thought after reading the post.
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19/10/2014 6:05 pm
Lovely post and no I don’t say it nearly enough. x
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19/10/2014 7:33 pm
I say it all of the time - probably too much, if that’s possible.
I always say to the kids that I have a secret and they say they know what it is, it’s that I love them. This happens at least once a day
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21/10/2014 9:44 pm
Oh Penny, what a beautiful note to your mum. And a wonderful reminder- I might send mine a quick I love you.
My daughter tells me I say “I love you” too much- impossible, I reply!
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22/10/2014 8:24 am
Oh it’s too early in the morning to be crying Penny.I tell my kids that I love them a lot.I probably don’t say it enough to my parents.P.S. That French guy is HOT!
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26/10/2014 4:04 pm
Beautiful post, Penny!
I started telling my parents and sister I loved them at the end of every phonecall when I was living abroad. It took them all by surprise at first but now we all do it without even thinking sometimes (yet if we forgot to say it we would feel it’s loss).
When O was born I promised myself I would tell him everyday… And I do, at random moments, and we even have two songs I made up about loving each other that he loves to sing. He will say it randomly to people to, in such a sweet and loving way.
But I do need to remember that it is not always what we say but how we behave that matters… With all the stress lately I have been far harsher than I usually would and have then felt bad for not taking the time to explain to him why mummy needs some time. I also get cross with people far quicker than I ever would before… So displaying that love as well as saying it can be difficult sometimes!
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