You love them deeply but can't show it easily

Come, let me be tender with you here, where you have been hard on yourself. The trouble you feel about the gap is itself a form of the love — a parent who did not love would not lie awake fearing their love isn''t reaching; the ache about the gap between how deeply you love and how little shows is the love pressing to get through, so read it not as "I do not love enough," which is false, but as "I love greatly and struggle to show it," which is true and far more workable. Love is spoken in more languages than the easy ones — the ready hug is one lovely language, but if it does not come naturally, your child hears the others just as well: the showing up, the small acts of care, the attention truly paid, for children read love in what a parent does as much as says, and you may be more fluent in love than you knew. And stretch a little toward their language, and say the love in words — not remaking yourself, which a child feels as false, but a hand on the shoulder, a note, and above all "I love you" said out loud, which costs you effort and lands all the more for it, for a child feels both the love and the reaching-past-your-nature it took. Which language of love do you already speak most to your child?