Broken Hearts

Jacinda has this poster hanging on her bedroom door. The other night we were giving her room a good cleaning before the school year really gets going. I was folding some sweaters and she was dawdling and started reading the poster out loud. When she got to the line "Sometimes I have a broken heart" she stopped and looked at me and said. "You know mommy, sometimes I do have a broken heart and no one knows." Her statement stopped me in my tracks and took my breath away. I went over and hugged her and told her that I knew.
"Really?" she asked. And I said "Why do you have a broken heart sometimes?"
She shrugged and buried her head in my shoulder the way she always does when she is missing her first mommy and the rest of her family in Ethiopia.
I whispered that it was OK to miss her first mommy and talk about her family in Ethiopia, the same way I have a hundred times in the last two years. She hugged me very tightly and then promptly changed the subject.
Many times I have been almost jealous of other moms who kids openly share their stories from Ethiopia. Jacinda isn't like that, but i am coming to realize she does remember, but she holds those memories so close to her heart that she keeps them only for herself. And after two and a half years I think I am ready to let her hold on to them. Her Ethiopian family and memories, whether shared with me or not, do not change the wonderful relationship she has with me nor the loving memories she cherishes so much.
The only thing I need to do is to never allow myself to forget that sometimes my baby does indeed have a broken heart and to give her the freedom to grieve in the privacy of her own soul as she has chosen to do.