Hey everyone, I’m not really sure how to start this. I guess you can say life has a way of hiding things right in front of us, only for it all to come crashing down when a seemingly insignificant detail reveals the truth. I’ve spent the better part of my life trying to be someone that others would be proud of and in doing so, I slowly lost track of who I was. But let me start from the beginning.
It was an old, weather-beaten journal that started it all. I found it buried under a pile of forgotten trinkets in my attic, a relic from my late mother. I had been up there sifting through years of dust and memories, trying to declutter but also hoping to feel something—anything—as I grappled with her loss. The journal was in a faded leather cover, its edges worn and corners dog-eared from use. I opened it, expecting nothing more than old grocery lists or reminders. Instead, what I discovered was a revelation.
The pages were filled with my mother’s neat, flowing script, chronicling her life through the years. I saw her dreams, her fears, her endless to-do lists, and in between all of that, a story I never knew existed. She wrote often about a garden—one that we never had. A garden she tended to in her mind, filled with the fragrance of jasmine and roses, a sanctuary she visited when life was too tough. But more than that, tucked in between her entries were passages about a little girl, a daughter whom she loved deeply but felt an inexplicable distance from.
Reading those words was like a knife through my heart. I had always believed we were close, my mother and I, but her words painted a different picture. There were poems of longing, notes of regret, and yet, there was so much love. I could see her struggle, her battles with expectations, and a loneliness she never showed. I never knew she felt this way and suddenly, there was this immense weight of realization—I had spent so much time trying to be what society wanted, that I never truly saw what my mother needed from me.
I sat there in the attic for what felt like hours, the journal clutched in my hands, the world around me fading into the background. It was as if my mother was speaking to me from the grave, showing me a mirror I had been too afraid to look into. Her words whispered truths I had never dared to voice, truths about dependence on what others think, truths about self-imposed solitude.
Over the days that followed, I devoured every entry. I retraced her steps through the words she left behind, slowly stitching together the fragments of the woman she was. I began to see the common threads between us—her fears, her dreams, her desire for something more than what society prescribed.
Then, one evening, I found an ink sketch she’d done of me as a child, hidden in the back cover—a sketch of me sitting in a garden that never was, surrounded by the flowers she loved so much. Her notes talked about how she wished I could find the same peace and sanctuary she had created in her mind, a place where expectations didn’t chain us down.
I remember holding that tissue-thin paper, feeling the weight of my mother’s hopes for me. I understood she wanted me to break free from a cycle of silence and compliance. That night, under the soft glow of a single lamp, I finally let go. Tears streamed down my face but they were not of sadness—they were of liberation, of the acceptance of all the unsaid words between us.
Since then, I’ve started my own garden, a real one. I plant it with the flowers she loved, nurturing them as I nurture the parts of myself I had neglected. Each blossom is a reminder to stay true to my own path, to speak my truth and embrace who I am beyond the shadows of expectation.
I’m sharing this because maybe somewhere, someone else is reading this and hiding parts of who they are, just as I did. Maybe you too can find truth in the whispers of the unsaid. It’s never too late to discover who you truly are, to honor the stories of those who came before us and carry their lessons forward.
Thank you for reading, for letting me share a piece of my journey with you.