Dear friends,
I’ve never been one to share much on here, but today I felt a weight I can’t carry alone anymore. It’s a story that has long been silenced, even to myself, until an unexpected moment brought it to light.
Last week, I decided to clean out the attic. We all know how these chores go—boxes stacked to the ceiling, each filled with bits and pieces of lives once led. Some boxes were marked, others anonymous. But one particular box caught my attention. It was small and nondescript, its tape peeling with age. Truthfully, I don’t even remember ever putting it there.
Inside, I found a collection of letters, each enveloped in a different hue of pastel, tied together with a red ribbon. As I opened one, a familiar script emerged, elegant but slightly slanted—a handwriting I hadn’t seen in years: my mother’s.
She passed away when I was seventeen, but I buried the pain and moved forward, or so I thought. She always wrote letters, but these were different. They were addressed to me, but never sent. Each letter unfolded a story, not just of love, but of a woman grappling with demons she never showed the world.
The one that changed everything was dated a year before she died. In it, she wrote about a summer evening—our last one together before she went to the hospital. We sat on the porch swing watching the stars, her hand holding mine firmly. I remember her saying, “The stars hold secrets if you listen closely.”
I never realized what she meant until I read her words. She wrote about her fears, about leaving me too soon, and the regret of words unsaid. She spoke of her struggles with depression, how she fought every day to be there for me, to shield me from the darkness she felt so deeply.
Tears fell as I read her confessions, each word pulling me into the depths of her hidden life. But the realization that struck me hardest was her unconditional love—the strength it took to smile while hurting inside. I had been too engrossed in my teenage world to notice the signs, to hear the cries hidden in her laughter.
Closing the letter, I sat there on the attic floor, the dust swirling as the sun’s rays pierced through the small window. A quiet realization settled in me—a truth I had long ignored. I had been angry for years because I didn’t understand why she left so suddenly, but now I see that she never truly left. Her love, her words, her memories, they linger in the spaces between the silence.
I found a new sense of peace that day, a clarity that was both painful and healing. I kept the letters, each one a fragment of her soul, to remind me of the love that was always there, waiting to be remembered.
I didn’t write this for sympathy or to burden you with my past, but to remind you all of the stories we carry, the ones untold and the conversations left unsaid. Tell your loved ones how you feel, reach out—listen to the silences between words. Sometimes, the greatest truths lie hidden, waiting for a quiet moment to be uncovered.
Thank you for reading.
Love,
Alyssa