Hey everyone,
I never thought I’d be the kind of person to pour their heart out on social media, but here I am, compelled by something I found this morning that’s forced me to confront emotions buried deep for years. I hope you’ll bear with me as I stumble through this.
It all started with an old cassette tape. A little piece of obsolete technology wrapped in dust and nostalgia. I was rummaging through a box in the attic, looking for an ancient family recipe, when I stumbled across a shoe box filled with tapes labeled in my mother’s neat handwriting. A wave of bittersweet memories washed over me as I sat cross-legged on the creaky wooden floor, flipping through the labels.
There, nestled between “Summer ’85” and “Dad’s Jazz Mix,” was one tape that stood out. It was labeled simply “For Lila.” My name. It stopped me cold. I didn’t remember ever owning a tape when I was young, certainly not one made by my mother. Curiosity gnawed at me, and I couldn’t help but dig out the old tape player we’d stored nearby.
The player was dusty, its batteries corroded, but after some tinkering, it crackled to life. I couldn’t believe it — a relic from another time now my conduit to discovering something I’d never known. With a hesitant hand and a heart pounding in my chest, I inserted the tape.
The familiar hiss of the tape rolling instantly took me back to my childhood. Then, my mother’s voice, clear yet soft, filled the room. “Hi, Lila,” she began, her tone tender and shimmering with love. “If you’re listening to this, I guess you’ve found my little secret.”
Tears prickled my eyes. I hadn’t heard her voice in years, not since we said our goodbyes, and the sound of it now opened a floodgate of emotions. Listening, I learned that my mother had recorded a lullaby — one that she had sung to me when I was a baby. I didn’t recognize it, but as she sang, warmth spread through me, wrapping me in invisible arms.
As the lullaby faded, her voice returned, this time softer, almost a whisper, as if confessing a long-held secret. “Lila, I sang this to you every night until you were two,” she said. “You stopped asking for it, so I stopped singing. But you have always carried it with you, darling. It’s in the way you move through the world, with such grace and quiet strength. I want you to know that even though I’m gone, this song is my way of being with you, always.”
I paused the tape, the weight of her words settling over me like a comforting blanket. For years, I had carried a sense of something lost, a vague emptiness I couldn’t quite name. I had often felt detached, as if a part of me was missing, but couldn’t understand why. Now, I realized, it was her voice — her song — that I’d been missing all along.
I sobbed quietly, recalling moments in my life where I had struggled, feeling alone and adrift. Yet through it all, I had somehow persevered, driven by an unseen force. Could it have been the lullaby, an echo of her love, sustaining me when I needed it most?
The tape continued, offering more of her stories, bits of advice, and reassurances.
“I know life will challenge you,” she said, “but I hope you never forget the love that surrounds you, even if you can’t always see it. You are never alone, Lila, and you are loved beyond measure.”
Those words planted themselves in my heart, sprouting a new understanding. I realized that I had been searching for approval, for love, in all the wrong places. Yet I had it all the time, stitched into the fabric of who I am.
Listening to the rest of the tape, I absorbed her message of love and hope, feeling her presence more vividly than I had in years. By the time the tape ended, I was spent, yet renewed, carrying a part of her forward that I didn’t know I needed.
I held the tape close, vowing to keep it safe, a tangible reminder of the love I discovered — and was rediscovering — every day of my life. The truth is, we’re never as alone as we think we are. Our loved ones leave pieces of themselves within us, echoes of their love that linger long after they’re gone.
I wanted to share this because maybe, just maybe, there’s someone else out there who needs to hear that they are not alone.
Thank you for reading,
Lila