An Open Letter To My Oldest Daughter: 'You Deserve The Mom I Am Now — I Fill Up Their Piggy Banks While I Stole From You'
The mom admitted that she wasn't the mother her daughter deserved.
Dasha Petrenko/Denis Moskvinov - Shutterstock There is no handbook that gives you the right and wrong ways to raise a child. Still, as a parent, you do the best you can, with the understanding that you don’t know what you don’t know. If you’re lucky, your little one will grow up to be a healthy and happy adult despite your flaws as a parent.
But sometimes, it's not always that simple, as TikTok user Amy Jackson's daughter unfortunately experienced. Now, Jackson is taking the steps to apologize to her daughter for her childhood.
Jackson took to TikTok to share an open apology letter to her eldest daughter.
Jackson started the video by saying, “This is going to be very hard for me, so please be kind."
She explained that filling her younger daughters’ piggy banks brought back the trauma she had inflicted on her eldest child. She told her daughter, “You deserved the mom I am now,” a mother who provides for her children in every way possible; mentally, emotionally, and financially.
But when she recalls her experiences with her teenage daughter, memories of taking rather than giving surface. She talked about buying her youngest daughter an Oculus in contrast to the time she pawned her first child’s Nintendo DS.
Jackson admitted that spending time with her child as a young mother was all a haze.
“You got pieces of me, and they were the worst parts,” she said, confessing that the best thing she could do for her child was to allow her mother, someone who would give her baby the love she deserved, to raise her. And Jackson’s mother did just that, taking care of her granddaughter as if she herself had birthed the girl.
Jackson now overcompensates by being all that and more to her younger kids.
Still, she feels guilty and hopeful that her eldest girl isn’t questioning her worth, asking why her little siblings got the love from their mom that she had never received. Jackson assured her daughter that there was nothing wrong with her, but that the onus for their lack of mother-daughter relationship fell squarely on her own shoulders.
Now the young lady is 16 years old, but Jackson has only acted as a true mother for the last nine years, in large part due to a past of addiction.
“You are the best thing that has ever happened to me. If I could change time, I would. If I could stop myself from that first pill… that first needle, I would,” she said as a clip of her daughter bringing her flowers flashed across the screen.
She acknowledged that she cannot go back in time but apologized for all that she had not been to her daughter.
Jackson will express her regrets to her daughter as many times as the girl needs to hear it.
Just 17 when she had her first baby, Jackson was not at all equipped to be a good mom. She now knows that her daughter deserved more and wishes she could have been the mom she is now. She promised that her younger kids would never know a mom like the one she’d been previously.
It was clear that the young lady had forgiven her mother and been welcomed into the new healthy family as she stood next to her little sisters' father on his and her mom’s wedding day. In picture after picture, she smiled broadly, clearly happy to be reunited with her mom and to have the opportunity to be a big sister to her doting siblings. And to add to the family’s newfound joy, Jackson was able to surprise her daughter with her very first car.
But reconnecting with the child she had lost wasn’t Jackson’s only victory. She also shared a video where she celebrated her and her husband’s successful recovery from addiction.
“13 years ago, two drug addicts met and formed a relationship,” it started. She shared that the couple had been clean for nine years and had two additional little girls. According to her, “the road was long, dark, and hard,” but in the end the journey was worth it.
Anyone could find themselves in Jackson’s shoes.
Like this regretful mother, I was a teen parent. The only thing that kept me from becoming an “Amy Jackson” was the fact that I had two parents that held my feet to the fire and refused to allow me to fail. Who knows where I would have been without the push I got?
Still, like Jackson, there are many things I could have done better. I thought that being a good mother was providing the basics: food, clothing, and shelter. When I married as a grown woman, I realized that was the bare minimum and that my older kids deserved much more than I had to give at the time.
We should be grateful for mothers like Jackson who share their life experiences so openly in hopes of teaching others the lessons they have learned. We should also be thankful for our own journeys that have led us to where we are today. The beauty is that as long as we are breathing, there is a chance to right our wrongs and choose a different path in life.
NyRee Ausler is a writer from Seattle, Washington. She covers lifestyle, relationships, and human-interest stories that readers can relate to and that bring social issues to the forefront for discussion.