This is a letter my mother wrote to me, when I was 16, which I publish here on Mother’s Day. I do this, with courage and vulnerability — and to honor her.
a letter from Mom
why say anything?
Why not keep it to myself? Who will read it — or listen? — or hear?
And yet, who doesn’t feel like this?
I identify with the voices who ask these questions. Who will care? What have I even said?
I struggle to put into words that this is an offering.
And yet, I recognize why I write such things down — and even dare to share them. I recognize my “aloneness” in these feelings and, in doing so, I know I’m not alone.
Who feels like this? I do.
Maybe you do too.
safety in abstraction
avoidant — get into the flow of it — keep making work — keep making something — anything — work — feed myself — walk — do it now so that I’ll never have to do it again — until the next time — if I want to — make a mark — as old as humanity — write shit down — it all falls away — even whole books fall away
“you’re alive.”
Sometimes it’s easy to complain about the mundane things, “the dailiness of tasks”, that must be attended to — in the interest of sustaining oneself. When I feel myself falling into that old pattern, I remember my father’s words, from years ago, when I did the same…
I finished speaking my litany of complaints — about all the things I “had to do” — and asked some “question” that I can no longer summon to my memory.
Yet, I vividly remember Dad’s answer, “You’re alive.”
Full stop.
taxes
The greatest price we pay is in time.
I sew one day to the next.
There is no separation really. One day bleeds into night — and even that I live through, in a subterranean dream space, from which I emerge — always grateful to sew more.
time — our scarcest resource
You can’t earn more. You can’t not spend it. You can’t get it back once it’s gone. It goes in one direction.
Things happen once.
the choices we make
day after day — week after week — year after year… I don’t know how to stay my “best self” if I let go of the spine I’ve created for myself here. Really just such a hard thing to navigate.
to be listened to
and heard… This is no small thing. It’s what we long for — from when we are very small children. My clarity of purpose is crystalizing.
what I used to do;
— I used to sheepishly assume that other people’s opinions were more valid, or more important, than my own.
— I used to doubt my self-worth based on hearing “mostly nothing” in response to my work.
— I used to question “my voice”, as a songwriter, when that internal voice was the one I most needed to listen to — the one I most needed to trust.
No more.