Mother: The Long Gift
On leaving, longing, and the long way back to Self
This is the third post in the Mother arc of the Becoming Whole series — and it’s the most personal one yet.
Not a painting. Not a framework.
Just the story of what motherhood actually looked like — across four seasons of my life.
Spring.
Desperate to be a mother. We can’t find your eggs. Your insides –old.
Then — triplets.
Everyone else sees them first. Not me.
Separated–it begins.
Family of five. A few weeks of bliss. Then: Children – a corner of my work screen.
Preemies in daycare. Who stays home?
He does. Not me.
But I want to be the one who stays. I’m their mother. It’s not supposed to be like this
I go to work. They are loved — even if they can’t see me.
Separated.
—
Summer.
Desperate. Searching. How?
Photography. Always behind the lens.
Maybe an answer? Building a business after work. No way to make enough to live.
I don’t exist in the photographs - or in their lives.
Global travel and airport lounges.
Holidays in conference rooms.
Dinner for one, at the bar. Exercising to sweat out the numbness of indulgence.
Chocolate from Belgium, fans from Singapore, signets from Shanghai. Filling them with things. Teaching them how to love me. Tying my very presence to the material.
Flying in and out. Belonging, still, to nobody.
“Why do you keep having to go back?” she chokes out. “Why did we move?”
Heart lurches. Why indeed. The real question: why haven’t I said no? It comes down to money. Doesn’t it always.
I love you, darling, I whisper.
Separated.
—
Fall.
Cancer. Lymph node involvement. Home at last.
An observer. I have betrayed them.
Oddly— grateful. Home, finally, with no demands other than to get well.
Then: anger. Resentment.
This isn’t fair. My life is almost over and I gave it to what?
The family I needed to love me doesn’t even know me.
Thanksgiving in Sweden. I’m away…again.
Fury rises. I will not do this. No more.
I see my mother doing payroll on her deathbed.
Would that be me?
I would die if I stayed.
So I leave.
—
The great college drop-off. First Missouri. Then Chicago. Then Portland.
Daughters gone - one by one. Deposited into a world I can’t follow them into.
Empty, silent house. Home?
Grocery shopping. Hey guys, do you need anything? Oh. Right. They’re gone.
On breaks they’re home — but they don’t want to be there.
Five now two.
Who am I?
Who am I now that I’m not that mother?
The void so vast I see myself floating in it.
Separated.
—
Winter.
I turn inward.
And I hear it — a child’s voice. Mine.
She needs a mother. Is this where I fit?
So I begin to listen. And she begins to remember.
Recounts her cries for love, five years at a time. All of the sins.
As I witness each memory — I hold myself.
Forgiving it all, I release.
Tears. The death, yes. But the rebirth as well.
I am a seed, under the snow. Regenerating.
Dear me — I’m sorry. I love you. Please forgive me.
—
Spring, again.
A quiet space — cleared through grace.
In the finding and forgiving, I’ve created room to breathe.
A peaceful dwelling space, a home between the no longer and the not yet.
I’m still a mother. But different.
One who holds loosely. Who watches from fullness rather than longing. Who learned — finally — that loving them well meant also loving herself.
Whole.
It is spring again.