Mother

Ode to an unlived life

Sometimes a word won’t leave you alone. For the past two days I’ve been hearing the word ‘Mother’ in my head— and this is what came through. This is me channeling the feelings about my mother, the woman who never got to raise me. It isn’t part of a series. It isn’t neat. But it’s true and as raw as it can get. It’s not my usual light-hearted self. This is me opening myself up a bit more. Maybe you’ll recognize something of your own story in it, too.

Mother❤️

She lived her life quietly, unnoticed,
as if she existed between the seconds of a ticking clock.
Not quite here,
not quite gone.

They all said she was mad.
But no one ever asked
what she had heard,
what she had to endure
before the world went quiet.

Her story —
as I imagine it, as I remember her
without ever truly knowing her —
does not feel the same.

A soul too quiet, too timid,
to withstand the oncoming storms.
A heart too numb
to fully become part of the world,
my world,
my existence.

A mind withdrawn in silent darkness,
unwilling to step beyond itself.

This is what it feels like
to be born from someone
who never fully arrived.

Her name was never spoken aloud.
Not in the house where silence curled
like words spoken to the ether,
not in the pages of any record,
not even in her own thoughts by the end.

She was a woman of unspoken things —
a mother only in theory,
a name on a document,
a ghost long before she left the world.

But she had a daughter.

And when that daughter grew up,
and became a mother too,
she heard everything the world ignored.

Heard the screams in the all-too-loud silence,
artfully wrapped in smiles,
the aching stitched into the fabric of quiet misery,
the legacy passed not in love,
but in sorrow —

because it was a sorrow
too great for one soul to carry.

This is not the story of her madness.
It is the story of what could not survive inside a woman
when no one came to help her hold it.

This is the voice she was never given.
And I am the daughter
who will speak it now.

Thank you for reading❤️

If this little story brought you a moment of stillness, I’m glad.
I believe silence is a kind of grace, and that stories, too, can offer us rest.

You’re warmly invited to subscribe if you haven’t already, to keep receiving gentle notes and slow stories like this one.
Feel free to share with someone who you believe might need a breath of calm today.

And if you’re already here, I thank you. Truly.
You make this quiet corner of the internet feel like home.

With ink and light and, maybe an essence of vanilla,

Lia