21 Letters – #1 For Mom
Through the Shadows Back to Us
There were days when the light dimmed,
when you stood in the shadows of a past
that whispered your name in a voice not your own,
a voice that tried to pull you into places
you didn’t belong,
quiet corners where the air was thick,
where the light didn’t reach.
You walked through that darkness,
gripped by monsters that are rarely mentioned,
yet somehow, with each step,
you held on to something deeper -
a flicker of the woman you knew you were,
a spark of who you could become,
who you wanted to be for us.
But it was hard, wasn’t it?
To fight a battle few could understand,
to wrestle with a shadow
that curled around you when you weren’t looking,
whispering promises of escape,
but stealing pieces of you as it lingered.
I saw it in the way your shoulders slumped,
the way your hands trembled,
the silence in your eyes
that screamed with a need to break free.
I didn’t understand then,
how could I?
But I could feel it,
the tension between you and the shadow,
the dance of you both,
pulling one way, then the other.
But you didn’t stay there.
You fought through the dark,
fought to pull yourself back
from the edge where the light felt like a dream,
fought to find the pieces of yourself
that hadn’t been stolen away,
fought to stand up straight again
so we could stand beside you.
There were nights when you disappeared
and we were left with the sound of our own breathing,
the emptiness of rooms that didn’t feel quite like home.
But in your silence,
you were searching,
reaching for something,
anything to pull yourself out of the fog.
You found it in the small things at first—
a moment of clarity,
a whisper of hope.
Slowly,
like a river carving its way through stone,
you began to remember who you were
before the shadows came.
And each time you took a step back to us,
it was like the sun rising after years of rain.
You rose,
slowly but steadily,
until the light could no longer be denied.
You found your way back.
Not just for us,
but for you,
for the woman you had always been
beneath the weight of all you carried.
I can’t know the depth of what you faced,
the ache of that struggle,
but I saw the way you held your ground,
the way you fought through the years
of feeling broken,
of feeling too far gone,
to be the mother you wanted to be.
But somehow,
even in the hardest moments,
you chose to keep coming back -
back to us,
back to yourself,
back to the love you were always meant to give.
You were never lost,
though it might have seemed that way sometimes.
You were finding your way
in the quietest of battles,
in the most tender of movements,
until you stood before us once again -
whole,
strong,
unbreakable.
Thank you for the courage to walk through the dark
and the grace to find the light again.
Thank you for fighting,
for clawing your way out of the shadows,
for giving us the best of you
even when you were trying to find it for yourself.
You are not just the mother we relied on,
you are the woman who taught us
that even in the deepest of struggles,
love never truly fades.