Love doesn't have to make sense to be true.
A letter to my oldest daughter
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This is a fictional letter I drafted several months ago, as part of an exercise from
. I choose to share it with you today, because the pain I feel in raising my firstborn, Felicity, arises from everything that fell upon her little life after Sarah came along. It was then I knew Felicity—at age two—would not understand why I had to leave so abruptly, so often, and that it would take years for me to explain it to her in a way she would understand.Now Felicity is fourteen, and our relationship has hit that tenuous strain between mother and daughter, which I felt and recall clearly in my relationship with my own mother about thirty years ago.
Sometimes letters we never send are the gateway into accessing the parts of our relationships we wish we could give voice to but are afraid to share openly. Sometimes they reflect regret and remorse. Sometimes they bespeak a tenderness that can’t be conveyed in direct conversation.
As you read, think of your own letters and to whom you might address them. What needs to be said? What is feverish, urgent, and beckoning you to tell someone—as if this were your one and only chance?
Dear Felicity,
I wish I’d written this to you many years ago, but I believe late is better than never. When your sister Sarah was born and you were a toddler nearing age three, all I could think of was what my absence would do to you. We’d built a routine, we’d bonded through our daily round to the credit union and post office, remember? Walking on the sidewalk past Miss Julie’s house, hand in hand. Do you remember how you always stopped to smell and admire her flower garden, especially the Gerbera daisies? Those were days of leisure, weren’t they? Then, it seemed that time was generous to us, but now I know that’s not always true.
I’m leaving again, though I don’t expect you to understand why. I’m not sure how to explain to you that I’m not rejecting you, that this is temporary, because I know it will feel like abandonment regardless of how it’s couched. To admit this flays my heart, because I know what abandonment feels like, especially by one’s mother: to have a part of you stripped away, to desperately follow after her in the faint hope that she will sweep you into her arms and tell you that she’ll never leave, that she’ll always be here. Instead, she pulls away and doesn’t look back.
I promise you I will look back. And I will give you as many hugs as you need, even if it takes an extra twenty minutes.
The reason I’m leaving is to share my story with others and listen to theirs. Even writing that sounds selfish. Maybe I am selfish. I hope you can forgive me. You are a young woman now, and you’ve always pressed on through sadness, disappointment, and loss. When you tell me that you feel you’re in Sarah’s shadow, I don’t know how to reach you in a way to let you know that you are gifted in your own right. You are sensitive, tenderhearted, thoughtful, and kind. You are braver than I ever was at your age, a far better artist than I was, too.
But will any of this carry you? Will it matter when I leave? Will you trust that I will return, or does the uncertainty rattle your ability to surrender what you don’t understand and arrive at a place of secure love, a place where your heart touches mine? If I could bring you with me, I would. Maybe that sounds unbelievable, but every time I walk out of the house and leave you behind, I question if you feel robbed of a mother—a real mother, one who doesn’t come and go, one you can count on.
All I can do is find you here, today, in this moment. Because, really, it’s all any of us are given. Most days, I doubt you will ever know how immense my love is for you, how I longed for you and delighted in every flutter and heartbeat and kick when you developed in my womb. I fought for you—to conceive you, to keep you alive within my body—and every day I feared I would lose you.
One day you may become a mother. If you do, you’ll experience that burst of love so strong it feels like pain, like a heart attack. You will weep in both sadness and delight when you remember the early days, how the cruelty of the clock doesn’t permit us the time we’d like—or need—to cradle the moments we want emblazoned in memory. But the heart carries us beyond memory. Emotion speaks in a way that cognition cannot.
There is little logic in love, sometimes in life, too. What I mean to say in all of this is that you were the first person to grab my heart and show me how to love, how to live. You brought me back to myself, and I’ve tried (probably in vain) to bring you to yourself, too. It doesn’t have to make sense to be true.
Love is the greatest, most powerful and gripping truth there is. Clutch it tightly, and you will never be lost.
I love you,
Mom
If you enjoyed reading this today, would you take a moment to check out some of these other, related essays I’ve written? I’d love it if you’d click on the heart, offer a comment, and share it with others. Thanks for being here!
This is one of the most satisfying newsletters I’ve ever read. And your daughter is ridiculously cute. May she never lose that smile. Thank you, Jeannie.
What a blessing to have the words of your mother memorialized in a letter, even if it's never sent, or ever found. Thank you for sharing. Mothers and daughters...its always brutifully complicated, isn't it?