Motherhood is a Love Story Written in Disappearing Ink
The morning light spilled through the curtains, soft and golden, casting long shadows across a house that no longer hummed with need. Once, tiny hands had reached for me before the sun had even stretched its limbs across the sky. My name had been a constant refrain, a lifeline, a promise that I would always be there. My days had been a symphony of motion—lunches packed with care, homework rescued from forgotten corners, birthday gifts procured with quiet precision. I had been the architect of a world that spun because I willed it to.
I had been everything.
And then—
The calls grew fewer. The frantic “Mom, can you—?” requests faded into silence. The house settled, not into peace, but into something unfamiliar—an absence, a stillness I didn’t recognize. I caught my reflection in the hallway mirror and searched for the woman I had been before they needed me. Had she always been fading? Or had I simply never looked?
No one warns you.
No one says that motherhood is a love story written in disappearing ink or that the hands that once clung so tightly will one day let go without looking back. No one tells you that the body they once said should “bounce back” will instead become something unseen, something unconsidered. The world loves a mother who gives. It celebrates her sacrifice. It praises her for disappearing into the needs of others.
But what happens when I stop serving?
Who am I when I am no longer just “Mom”?
And then—it happened.
One morning, I woke up and saw her. She was no longer the mother or the caretaker, but simply the woman herself. Whole. Present. Unshaken. I had never been fading—I had simply been looking for myself in the eyes of those who needed me, rather than my own. I had never been invisible. The world had only instilled in me the habit of seeking validation in unsuitable places.
So I stopped waiting to be seen.
I saw myself.
And now? I take up space—boldly, unapologetically. I refuse to measure my worth in the echoes of what I have given away. I am not just the sum of my sacrifices. I am not the only thing that remains after the chaos has settled.
I am here. I have always been here.
And when I see another woman standing on the edge of herself, waiting to be acknowledged, I will meet her gaze and remind her—
I see you. You are still here.
And together, we do not just exist.
We rise.
That was absolutely beautiful