Reflection

But first: I FINALLY LEARNED THE NAME OF THIS SONG!!!!!!!! 

holy poop I hate it when I don't know song titles.

Take a wissen.

And now:
(Language. Proceed with caution.)

Me to my kids five years ago: "Some people we go to church because they're there, and other people, we go to church despite them being there." = Some church members (including people my kids had to interact with) are assholes, but we go anyway because The Church Is Still True.

Me now: NOPE NOPE NOPE. We don't deliberately put our kids in the path of adults who shame them for their hair or clothes or attitudes. We don't take our gay kid to listen to anti LGBTQ rhetoric. We don't endanger their physical or mental health by entrusting them to psychos whose favorite damn phrase is 

"I CAN DO HARD THINGS"

because years later, looking back on all that my kids suffered because of MY belief in a religion, the hardest thing to do is forgive myself. 

I should have grabbed my babies and run out the door of that church.

Just having a little cry now.

I can't go back and change the past. 

"When you know better, you do better." 

Etc. 

Still wish I had a time machine.