When A Child Speaks

There is a particular kind of trembling that happens when your child writes to you with honesty.

Not the kind that comes from anger.
Not even from accusation.

But from truth.

When my daughter wrote to me, she did not scream.
She did not insult.
She did not close the door.

She explained.

And in explaining, she held up a mirror.

It is a strange experience to see yourself reflected through the pain of someone you love most.

I read her words slowly.

Carefully.

With open heart.

Every sentence felt like walking barefoot across ground I did not realize had broken glass.

She told me she carried emotional weight that was not hers.

She told me she felt pressure.

She told me she felt she had to protect herself.

And I did not fight her.

I did not defend myself.

I did not explain the nights I cried alone.
The years I tried to survive inside a marriage that hollowed me.
The quiet suffocation of living in the same house after separation.
The loneliness of being strong in front of everyone and weak only in private.

I did not say those things.

Instead, I apologized.

Because sometimes love means absorbing the impact first.

Even when your own ribs are bruised.

There is a grief no one prepares you for -- the grief of realizing that in your effort to survive, you may have leaned too heavily on the very people you were trying to protect.

I never meant to place my burdens on her shoulders.

To me, we were talking.

Sharing.

Mother and daughter becoming woman to woman.

But pain does not always travel evenly between two people.

Sometimes one carries more.

And sometimes the carrier stays silent until one day she cannot anymore.

I am proud of her courage.

It would have been easier to disappear.

It would have been easier to harden.

Instead, she spoke.

That is not cruelty.

That is strength.

And yet -- I would be lying if I said my heart did not crack while reading her words.

Because there is another truth that lives quietly inside me.

I was not trying to harm.

I was trying to survive.

I was trying to breathe in a house that did not feel like home anymore.

I was trying to make sense of a marriage that had already collapsed emotionally long before it did on paper.

I was trying to raise children while unraveling myself.

There are no manuals for that.

There are no clean victories.

Only imperfect attempts.

I wonder if one day she will also see me not as a storm, but as someone weathered by storms.

Not as someone who burdened her intentionally, but as someone who did not know where else to put the weight.

I hope that one day she will understand that my confessions were not demands.

That my tears were not expectations.

That my exhaustion was not manipulation.

I hope she will see that even flawed mothers love fiercely.

Even wounded mothers try.

Even imperfect women deserve compassion.

I do not need her to say I was right.

I do not need her to erase what she felt.

I only hope that someday, she will hold both truths at once:

That she was hurt.
And that I was hurting too.

Both can exist.

Both are real.

Tonight, I sit with the quiet ache of loving a child who is growing into her own boundaries.

I sit with the humility of being told I must change.

And I sit with a small, stubborn hope -- that honesty, even painful honesty, is not the end of love.

Maybe this is what healing looks like.

Not loud reconciliation.

Not instant closeness.

But two women, connected by blood and history, learning how to speak without destroying each other.

If she reads this someday, I want her to know:

I am not perfect.

But I am not your enemy.

I am a mother who loved in the only ways she knew how at the time.

And I am still here.

Still willing.

Still hoping that one day, I will be understood -- not defended, not glorified -- just understood.

And perhaps, gently, unjudged.

Reading The Prophet After Everything

My mom gave me an old, worn-out copy of The Prophet in December 2023 while I was here in New Jersey. It had been sitting in her stash for years -- yellowed pages, softened spine, the kind of book that looks like it has survived more than one lifetime.

I only started reading it yesterday.

And I was not prepared.

Love.
Marriage.
Children.
Prayer.
Farewell.

Those were the sections that hit me really, really hard -- not as beautiful poetry, but as uncomfortable truth.

 
On Love

Almustafa says love will crown you and crucify you.

I used to think that was dramatic language. Now I understand it is not dramatic at all. It is honest.

I loved deeply. I did not love halfway. I did not enter marriage casually. I endured. I stayed. I sacrificed. I mothered. I carried emotional weight that was not always equally shared.

Love did not just give me joy. It broke me open. It exposed my fears. It tested my pride. It revealed how much I could tolerate before collapsing. It showed me how far I was willing to stretch to keep something alive.

And here is the truth I am finally admitting to myself:

The fact that my marriage failed does not mean I failed at love.

It means I loved fully.

If anything, I loved beyond comfort. And sometimes, that kind of love reshapes you through pain.

I was not foolish. I was faithful to love.

 
On Marriage

“Let there be spaces in your togetherness.”

That line unsettled me.

Marriage is not supposed to suffocate. It is not supposed to erase identity. Two pillars must stand apart yet upright.

In my marriage, I stood. I tried to keep standing. I tried to preserve the structure.

But one pillar cannot hold a temple alone.

When one grows and the other resists growth…
When one carries emotional responsibility and the other withdraws…
When animosity replaces partnership…

That is not sacred space. That is imbalance.

I see now that I was trying to sustain something that required two steady pillars. I was exhausting myself trying to compensate for what was missing.

That realization hurts.

But it also frees me from the quiet accusation that I simply “wasn’t enough.”

Marriage requires two whole people. Not one person over-functioning for two.

 
On Children

“Your children are not your children.”

That one pierced me.

I did not try to own my children. I poured into them. I protected them. I sacrificed for them. I built foundations so they could stand strong.

And now there is distance.

It feels like abandonment. It feels like rejection. It feels like something I must have done wrong.

But Gibran’s words forced me to confront something uncomfortable:

They are separate souls.

They have their own journeys -- including their own blind spots, pride, confusion, and emotional immaturity. I cannot force them to see me correctly. I cannot force them to defend me. I cannot force their father to help bridge the emotional gap. I cannot script their emotional development.

I carried them in my body.

But I cannot carry their adulthood.

That is the part no one prepares a mother for.

Their distance is not necessarily a verdict on my motherhood. It may simply be a chapter in their growth -- one that wounds me deeply, but does not erase who I was to them.

I can love them. I cannot control their path.

That is the most painful release.

 
On Prayer

When I reached the section on prayer, I expected comfort.

Instead, I felt exposed.

He says not to pray only in sorrow. Not only in need. Not only in desperation.

And I realized how often I have prayed in survival mode.

I have prayed through a failing marriage.
I have prayed through emotional abandonment.
I have prayed through health scares and silent nights.
I have prayed when I felt alone.
I have prayed when I felt misunderstood.

Those prayers were real.

But what struck me was this:

Prayer is not begging.
Prayer is not bargaining.
Prayer is not panic.

Prayer is connection.

It is not about informing God of my needs. It is about opening myself.

Prayer does not always fix marriages.
It does not force children back.
It does not instantly heal illness.

But it stabilizes the soul.

It softens bitterness.
It loosens resentment.
It quiets panic.

Maybe prayer is less “Fix this for me” and more “Strengthen me within this.”

That thought humbles me.

I do not have to grip everything so tightly.

I can pray without performing.
Without explaining.
Without solving.

Prayer changes me more than it changes circumstances.

And maybe that is the deeper miracle.

 
On Farewell

“A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.”

When I read that, I did not think of reincarnation first.

I thought of reinvention.

I have lived multiple lifetimes inside this one body.

The young wife who believed endurance was strength.
The mother who carried everything quietly.
The woman who stayed from 1996 to 2018 in a marriage that did not make her happy.
The woman who walked away.
The mother who now feels the ache of distance.
The woman managing her health, her vulnerabilities, her aging body.
The woman rebuilding identity piece by piece.

I am not the same woman I was ten years ago. I am not the same woman I was even five years ago.

Parts of me have died.

Parts of me have been born.

The line about being borne again feels less mystical and more personal.

I am already that “other woman.”

Not another person -- but another version of myself.

Stripped.
More aware.
Less naïve.
Still capable of love.
Still wounded.
Still standing.

Reading this old, worn-out book now -- not when it was handed to me, but now -- feels intentional.

I was not ready before.

Now I am reading it not as literature, but as a mirror.

Love refined me.
Marriage revealed imbalance.
Motherhood taught me release.
Prayer is teaching me surrender.
Farewell is teaching me rebirth.

My ex-husband’s indifference does not erase my worth.
My children’s distance does not erase my motherhood.
My health challenges do not erase my resilience.

If anything, they prove I have lived deeply.

I am still here.

Still becoming.

And maybe this book found its way back into my hands at exactly the right time.

___________________________

 

I did not read The Prophet as a detached observer. I read it as a woman who has loved deeply, stayed too long, endured silently, mothered fiercely, prayed desperately, and survived quietly. Every page felt like it was peeling something open in me. I see now that my love did not fail — it refined me. My marriage did not collapse because I was weak — it revealed imbalance I tried to carry alone. My children’s distance does not erase my motherhood — it forces me to release what I cannot control. My prayers are no longer just cries for rescue — they are lessons in surrender. And every goodbye I have lived through is not the end of me, but the making of another version of me. I am not destroyed. I am becoming.

Three Gardens, One Soil

There are three gardens in my life.

They live in different corners of the internet, but they grew from the same ground. I did not fully understand that until now.

The first was Like Showers On New Grass (October 2009 – October 2012).

Letters to God...

It was a season of hopeful reaching -- words lifted upward, mostly filled with light, good news, and grace as I understood it then. I was not yet ready to name drought. When I stopped writing there, it was not because faith disappeared, but because exhaustion did. It is difficult to keep writing about showers when you begin to feel cracks beneath the soil.

The second was Stories From My Garden (October 2010 – December 2018, revived August 2025).

Bloom where you are planted…
A blog in pictures and seasons about the people and fur people I love most.

This one was different. This was the real soil -- the people and fur people I loved most, the birthdays, the memories, and eventually, the fractures. It was not curated. It was not filtered. It was life as it unfolded. When it fell silent in 2018, it was not because there were no stories left to tell. It was because the stories had grown heavy. Sometimes the gardener steps back when the ground beneath her feet feels unstable.

Then came Rose Blossoms In The Wind (July 2013 – present).

Stop, and Smell the Roses…

This became the rhythm. For years, I posted every single day -- roses gathered carefully, beauty arranged faithfully. When life felt uncontrollable, this garden remained steady.

Eventually, that daily rhythm softened into weekly bloom. Three hundred sixty-five became fifty-two. And something surprising happened. I realized I could still breathe. The oxygen was not gone; it had simply adjusted.

Rose Blossoms had been oxygen for me. It was the garden that never withered when the others did. But I see now that the strength was never in the roses. It was in the gardener. I was the one who kept showing up. I was the one who refused to let at least one space go dark.

I used to think Rose Blossoms was easy. The poetry and images were gathered from books and the web. I have black thumbs. I can kill a cactus. So I planted flowers in cyberspace instead. But tending a virtual garden consistently for more than a decade is not ease; it is resilience. When real soil felt heavy, I gathered beauty where I could find it. That was not pretending. That was surviving.

If I look at the three now, I see the pattern clearly.

Like Showers was my hopeful spirituality.
Rose Blossoms was my curated beauty.
Stories From My Garden is my unfiltered truth.

Prayer. Beauty. Soil.

They are separate spaces. Sacred in their own way. But they are not separate selves. They are seasons of one woman learning how to live through different weather.

Like Showers remains paused. Not abandoned. Just resting. Some gardens lie dormant until the right rain returns. Rose Blossoms continues its weekly bloom. Stories From My Garden stands here now, revived, less afraid of naming erosion.

All three remain mine.

They share the same roots.

If you are curious, you may wander into the other gardens here:

Like Showers On New Grass -- https://likeshowersonnewgrass.blogspot.com/

Rose Blossoms In The Wind -- https://roseblossomsinthewind.blogspot.com/

And if you stay here --

this is the soil I stand on now.

Still rooted.
Still learning.
Still blooming where I am planted.

"...How Is Your Garden?"

Six years ago, someone left a simple question on my blog.

“Nice. How is your garden?”

I did not see it then.

In 2020, I was already separated. The decision had been made in July 2018. But separation did not mean distance. I was still living in his house -- and as time moved on, in a different room -- under the same roof.

There were no shouting matches. No slammed doors. No dramatic confrontations. Not with him. Not with my daughter. Not with my son. If anything, it was controlled. Civil. Quiet.

But quiet does not mean healthy.

By 2020, the garden was already strained. The development was swift -- like a story arc that grows more knotted instead of resolving. The erosion was slow, but steady. It flowed quietly down the slope until I realized I was living in something that felt suffocating.

Still, it was not yet shattered. It was heavy. Complicated. But standing.

My son knew first. He was already older when the separation unfolded, and I believed he was mature enough to understand the reality of what I was living through. I did not intend for secrets to exist between my children. And so, in time, I spoke to my daughter about my decision. She understood in a way that surprised me. With her tender heart, she said she had quietly known for some time that I was not happy.

To me, it felt like woman to woman. Adult to young adult. I waited until she was older. I did not ask her to choose. I did not force allegiance.

But I now understand that what feels like sharing to one person can feel like weight to another.

My son, now 27, believes I placed too much on her shoulders. He calls it trauma dumping. He believes I involved her in adult pain. Other words were used too -- clinical words. Abusive. Enabler. Even my own mother was described as someone who enabled behavior I never intended to be harmful.

I have sat with those words. I have turned them over in my mind. I do not claim perfection. I am human. I have made mistakes. But I do not recognize myself in the portrait that has been painted.

Before I left in December 2025, we had what was meant to be a family discussion.

First, it was just me and the children. There was no shouting. No chaos. The tone remained controlled. But the words were heavy. My son told me he saw me as a homewrecker. He said that in his eyes, I had been “dead” to him for years. He insisted that I had trauma dumped on his sister and that she needed therapy because of it.

Later, I spoke privately with their father. He told me that when I am not in the house, things feel happier. That perhaps I should consider living elsewhere.

That same evening, the four of us sat down again. The atmosphere remained restrained, but the message was unmistakable. My son said that if I wanted a relationship with him, I needed to seek therapy -- not as a suggestion, but as a condition.

There was no screaming. No dramatic rupture. Only words spoken calmly that carried more weight than raised voices ever could.

Shortly after, I left for the United States.

And yet, sometime after I left in December 2025, something shifted.

There was no conversation marking the change. No warning. Only the quiet realization that distance had hardened into something else.

And then came December 27, 2025.

Just days after Christmas.

That was the day my son blocked me on Facebook.

It did not happen after a fight. It did not follow confrontation. It happened quietly. A small action in the digital world, but it felt seismic in my heart. Not because of the platform, but because of what it symbolized.

It was a quiet closing of a door. No explanation. No final conversation. Only distance.

In the months that followed, I began to feel that the language used in that December conversation had settled into something permanent.

My daughter, who once laughed with me as we shared our heart stories, grew quieter too.

There were no dramatic words. No confrontation.

Only absence.

Not a single message asking how I am -- not even in the middle of rising health concerns that have required monitoring, tests, and strength I sometimes do not feel I have.

Perhaps she now sees those past conversations differently.

Perhaps what once felt like connection now feels like burden.

I do not know.

I only know that the silence feels complete.

And that is why today, if the person who asked that question in 2020 ever reads this -- know that the truth behind my reply is this: my garden has changed.

In 2020, it was already strained. Now it stands in a different landscape -- still rooted, still alive, but altered, carrying absence where warmth once lingered.

My life is not a fairy tale. If it belonged in a book, it would sit among the darker stories -- where woods are deep, lessons are carved slowly, and survival matters more than tidy endings.

But even in those stories, the garden does not disappear. It adapts. It finds new soil. It learns to bloom differently.

My garden has changed.

But it is still standing.

And for now -- that is truth.

___________________________  

If you would like to understand what God’s Bouquet means to me, you can find it waiting on the right side bar of this blog -- where I am still learning to bloom, even here.

 

Dandelion Season -- When the Wind Takes What You Love

Looking at the photo of the dandelion that gets blown away to the wind, it brings tears to my eyes.

It is such a quiet image -- almost gentle.

And yet it feels violent in a way no one talks about.

The stem is still there.
The root is still anchored.
But pieces of it are being carried off -- one by one -- by something it cannot control.

That is what this season of my life feels like.

I am still here.
Still a mother.
Still loving with the same heart that once tucked them into bed and prayed over their sleeping faces.

But pieces of my heart feel like they are being lifted away from me.

Conversations that no longer happen.
Messages that go unanswered.
Silence that stretches longer than it should.

It feels like standing still while the wind decides what it will take.

There is something unbearably sad about a dandelion in that moment.

When it is bright yellow, it is alive and unapologetic.
When it turns white and feathery, it becomes fragile -- temporary -- almost waiting.

And then someone blows.

Or the wind does.

And it scatters.

You do not know where the seeds will land.
You do not know if they will grow.
You only know the flower will never look the same again.

I look at that image and I see myself.

Not destroyed.

But changed.

Not uprooted.

But altered.

There is grief in that.

Because I did not expect motherhood to feel like this -- like watching pieces of my own heart drift farther and farther away.

I did not expect love to feel unanswered.

I did not expect to stand rooted while feeling emptied.

And yet, there is something else in that image.

The dandelion is not dying.

It is multiplying.

Every seed that leaves carries the possibility of life somewhere unseen.

Maybe that is what love is, too.

Maybe the love I poured into my children did not vanish.
Maybe it is still traveling -- carried by time, by memory, by something I cannot see.

Maybe one day it will land softly in their understanding.
Maybe one day it will grow back toward me.

Perhaps this is what it means to be part of God’s bouquet -- to bloom, to scatter, to trust that even what is carried away is still held within a larger design.

Right now, I do not know.

Right now, I only know the ache of watching the wind take what I want to hold.

But I am still standing.

Rooted.

Waiting.

And if the dandelion can release its seeds without knowing where they will land,
maybe I can release my fear without knowing how this story ends.

Even in scattering, there is hope.

Even in letting go, there is faith.

And even with tears in my eyes,
I am still here.

___________________________  

God’s Bouquet is where I anchor my hope -- you can find it waiting on the right side bar of this blog.

Dandelion Season

When I was younger, I loved roses.

They were elegant -- deliberate -- admired.
They looked like what beauty was supposed to be.

I loved them so much that I created versions of myself around flowers.
Annaree became SakuRee Bloom.
I filled pages and feeds with petals and poetry.
I collected quotes the way some people collect jewelry.
I merged flowers and words because they felt safe -- soft -- lovely.

Back then, life still felt arranged.

Later, I learned that my birth flowers were cosmos and marigolds.
Wildflowers.
Simple.
Unpretentious.
Growing wherever they were planted, without ceremony.

I did not think much of that then.

Time passed.

Life became heavier.

You cannot return to childhood once the weight of adulthood settles into your bones.
You cannot rewind the clock to when beauty was uncomplicated.

When I came to New Jersey and witnessed my first true Spring, I noticed something that surprised me --

Dandelions.

They were everywhere.

Not in curated gardens.
Not in bouquets.
Not chosen.

Just there.

Bright yellow against grass that had barely recovered from winter.
Standing up without permission.
Unapologetic.

And something in me shifted.

Because I began to see myself in them.

Dandelions are not roses.
They are not revered.
They are not preserved in crystal vases.

They bloom anyway.

Fresh -- they are little suns scattered across the ground.
Later -- they dry into fragile white spheres.
Feathery. Delicate. Temporary.

You blow on them.
Make a wish.
Watch them scatter.

There is something beautiful about that.
And something unbearably sad.

You do not know where they land.
You do not know if they grow.
You do not know if they disappear into nothing.

You only know they let go.

Right now, my life feels like the dandelion stage after the bloom.

I bloomed once.
I loved fiercely.
I built a home.
I raised children with everything I had.

And now I feel like I have been blown into the wind.

My children do not speak to me.

I still do not understand why the distance feels so final.
I replay conversations in my mind the way wind replays across empty fields.

Was I too much?
Was I not enough?
Was leaving a marriage the unforgivable act?

Sometimes I feel like I have been uprooted -- scattered -- left to land wherever the wind decides.

And yet.

Dandelions do not ask for approval before they grow.

They do not apologize for blooming in inconvenient places.

They grow in cracks.
They grow in forgotten corners.
They grow where nothing else tries.

The poem “God’s Bouquet” says to bloom where you are planted.

I used to read that as something gentle.

Now I read it as something defiant.

Bloom -- even here.
Bloom -- even if the soil is hard.
Bloom -- even if you were not chosen.

I wish I could be that hardy.

I wish I could look at my circumstances -- the silence from my children, the unanswered questions, the ache in my chest -- and simply grow anyway.

Maybe that is what this season is.

Not rose season.
Not curated garden season.

Dandelion season.

A season where I learn to find beauty in survival.
A season where I stop measuring myself against perfection and begin honoring resilience.

Because dandelions are not lesser flowers.

They are proof that life continues.

Even after winter.
Even after being cut down.
Even after being called unwanted.

And maybe, just maybe, being blown into the wind is not the end of the story.

Maybe it is scattering seeds into places I cannot yet see.

I do not know where my children will land in their understanding of me.
I do not know if they will ever see the years of love as clearly as I lived them.

But I know this --

I bloomed once.
I can bloom again.

And even if I am only a wildflower in someone else’s field,
I am still part of God’s bouquet.

 ___________________________  

To understand what God’s Bouquet means to me, you can find it waiting on the right side bar of this blog -- I invite you to read along.

Eggshellent Ideas

Before life rearranged me, I made art from broken things.

I glued colorful beads onto my drawing of the side-view face of the Madonna gazing at her Child, sketched on bond paper. I pressed sequins into place with hands that believed details mattered. To this day, that piece remains in my collection of childhood keepsakes.

Later, I crushed eggshells and laid them, piece by piece, into a larger Madonna and Child image. This time, I painted over the shells, turning fragments into form. I called the project “Eggshellent Ideas.” My mom framed it -- not because it was flawless, but because she saw something in me worth preserving.

I believed fragments could become sacred if handled with care.

I did not know I would one day become the fragment.

I fell in love. I married. I grew up fast. I became a wife before I understood partnership and a mother before I finished understanding myself. And then I did what many women do -- I endured.

From 1996 to 2018, I stayed in a marriage that did not make me happy. I raised my children. I fed them, worried over them, worked for them. I was tired. I was imperfect. I was overwhelmed. But I was trying.

Trying does not come with applause.

When I finally chose to let go -- when I chose air over suffocation -- I believed the worst was over.

I was wrong.

Years later, my children decided I am a bad mother. Not flawed. Not human. Bad. Worthy of distance. Worthy of silence.

There is no gentle way to absorb that.

To my children, M and G -- I was not perfect. I made mistakes. I was young. I was exhausted. I chose freedom when I could no longer survive inside my own life. But I did not stop loving you both. I did not abandon you. I did not erase my devotion because my marriage ended.

You may see me through your pain. I cannot control that. But I will not accept a version of myself that erases the years I carried you in my body and in my bones.

I was a trying mother.
That is the truth.

I have no regrets.

I cannot regret surviving. I cannot regret choosing breath. I made decisions with the strength and knowledge I had at the time. None of us raise children with the clarity of hindsight.

I feel unlucky.

Unlucky that love did not last.
Unlucky that freedom came with a cost.
Unlucky that my motherhood is being rewritten without me.

But I am not ashamed.

The girl who made art from broken shells is still here. Life handed me fracture after fracture, and I am still assembling something that holds.

Because broken does not mean worthless.

If I could turn shattered shells into something worthy of framing, I can do the same with the pieces of myself.

They may step away -- but I remain.

The Sum Of Our Choices

A few days ago, I watched a movie.

One line pierced through me --

“Our lives are not defined by any one action. Our lives are the sum of our choices.”

And I sat there thinking --

Then why does it feel like my entire life has been reduced to one?

One decision.
One turning point.
One choice to leave a marriage that was slowly destroying me.

Right now, it feels like that single act has swallowed everything else.

The years I stayed.
The years I endured.
The years I protected my children from things they never even knew I carried.

Gone.

Erased.

Rewritten into a simple narrative --
“She left.”

As if that one action cancels decades of love.

As if that one chapter defines the whole book.

And the punishment feels relentless.

The silence.
The emotional distance.
The subtle way I am treated like I fractured something sacred beyond repair.

I am hurting in ways I cannot fully explain.

My body aches.
My chest feels tight.
My mind replays every decision like a courtroom where I am both accused and judge.

Was that one choice enough to make me unworthy?

Was survival a crime?

Because some days, the message I feel from my own children is this --

You chose wrong.
And now you live with it.

But if our lives are the sum of our choices, then mine is not one moment.

I chose to stay when leaving would have been easier.
I chose to keep the peace for their sake.
I chose to put them first -- over pride, over comfort, over self.

I chose love, over and over again.

And I chose to leave only when staying was costing me my sanity.

That is not selfishness.

That is a mother reaching her breaking point.

Yet here I am, living as though that one action outweighs every other choice I made in devotion.

The pain is raw.

Not poetic.

Raw.

It feels like being slowly cut out of the very lives I once built around bedtime stories and school mornings and whispered prayers.

If my life is the sum of my choices, then I refuse to let it be defined by this one.

I will not let my identity collapse into a single decision.

I am more than that moment.

I am the years of sacrifice.
The nights of worry.
The unconditional love that did not withdraw when things became inconvenient.

And even now, as I suffer, I am still choosing.

Choosing not to hate.
Choosing not to retaliate.
Choosing not to let rejection turn me cruel.

If my children see only one chapter, that is their limitation.

But I will not reduce myself to it.

My life is not one action.

It is the sum of every time I loved when it hurt.

And I am still choosing love.

Even now.

A Letter To God From A Tired Heart

Dear God,

I am coming to You because I have nowhere else to put this pain.

I am placing all of it at Your feet --
every heartbreak,
every unanswered question,
every tear I wipe away when no one is looking.

You see what I carry.

You see the physical pain in my body that will not leave.
The exhaustion in my bones.
The heaviness in my chest that feels like it is pressing inward from all sides.

You see the emotional wounds that reopen daily --
the rejection,
the silence,
the feeling of being erased from the lives I once centered my own around.

And You see the psychological weight --
the doubt,
the second-guessing,
the torment of asking myself what I did wrong.

God, I do not know what else to say to You.

I talk to You every day.
I tell You everything.
And sometimes it feels like You are silent.

Please do not turn Your face from me.

If I have sinned, show me gently.
If I have erred, correct me with mercy.
But do not leave me alone in this valley of confusion.

I need the miracle of healing.

Heal my body -- where pain has made its home.
Heal my heart -- where rejection has settled.
Heal my mind -- where thoughts spiral and accuse me.

I cannot keep bleeding like this.

Father, You know I did not abandon or abuse my children.
You know my intentions.
You know the years I stayed,
the sacrifices I made,
the nights I prayed over them.

If I was wrong, reveal it to me with clarity.
But if I am being punished by misunderstanding,
then defend me in ways I cannot defend myself.

Touch my children’s hearts.

Not to make them feel guilty.
Not to force them.
But to let them see the truth.

Let them understand that what they are doing to me
cuts deeper than any worldly punishment.

Let them see that I still love them.
Let them remember who I have always been to them.

And if reconciliation is not immediate,
then give me the strength to survive the waiting.

God, I am tired of pretending I am strong.

I am not strong right now.

My heart feels like it is screaming inside my chest.
Some days I feel stabbed by memories.
Other days by silence.

Please do not let this pain destroy what is left of me.

Sit with me in this.
Hold me when I feel abandoned.
Speak to me when Your silence feels unbearable.

I do not want to lose my faith.
I do not want bitterness to replace tenderness.
I do not want despair to define me.

I want healing.
I want peace.
I want restoration -- in whatever form You know is right.

Until then, carry what I cannot carry anymore.

I am placing it all at Your feet.

And I am staying here -- not because I understand,
but because I have nowhere else to go.

Amen.

Valentine’s Day For A Mother Who Is Not Chosen

Today is Valentine’s Day.

Everywhere I look, I see flowers, hearts, celebrations of love.

And I sit here asking myself a question that feels too heavy to carry --

What makes a mother unworthy of her children’s love?

Valentine’s Day is not only for lovers.
It is for anyone who longs to be chosen.

And today, I feel unchosen.

I did not abandon my children.
I did not disappear from their lives.
I did not stop loving them.

All I did was leave a marriage that was breaking me -- after waiting until they were grown enough to understand.

Or so I thought.

Now I question everything.

Was I selfish?
Was I wrong to protect my own peace?
Did choosing survival make me the villain?

Sometimes I look at other mothers who walked away from their children completely -- who started new lives without looking back.

And I ask myself --

Am I worse than them?
Is staying present but separating from their father somehow more unforgivable?

Because the message I feel today is this --

I am the bad one.
The one who deserves distance.
The one who must accept silence.
The one who should understand why she is no longer embraced.

And that thought pierces deeper than anything else.

Every day feels like being stabbed in the same place.
The wound never closes because the rejection continues.

Valentine’s Day magnifies it.

It reminds me that love is celebrated -- but not all love is returned.

I still wake up loving them.
I still carry their names in my prayers.
I still feel that reflex in my chest when something reminds me of them.

Nothing in me has withdrawn.

And yet I am treated as if I forfeited my right to be close.

The hardest part is not the distance.
It is the narrative.

The subtle implication that I broke something sacred -- that I fractured the family -- that my leaving the marriage is the original sin.

But here is the truth I struggle to hold onto --

A woman choosing to leave a painful marriage does not equal a mother abandoning her children.

Those are not the same thing.

I did not leave them.

I left a situation that was no longer healthy.

And yet today, on Valentine’s Day,
I sit with the unbearable feeling that love has been reassigned.

That the other parent is the safe one.
The good one.
The chosen one.

And I am the cautionary tale.

This hurts in ways I cannot explain without sounding bitter.

But I am not bitter.

I am brokenhearted.

Valentine’s Day for me is not roses.

It is longing.

It is writing because if I do not let these words out, the grief will suffocate me.

It is loving children who may not be thinking of me today.

It is hoping that one day they will see that my separation was not betrayal -- it was survival.

If I am guilty of anything, it is loving them beyond reason.

And even now -- especially now -- I still do.

Casa Arcoiris De Anna -- Learning To See With Softer Eyes

This week, I received another full batch of photos.

To be honest -- my first reaction was not joy.

There were boards on the floor. Drawers half-open. Shelves unfinished. Angles that did not quite capture what I wanted. Lighting that did not flatter the rooms the way I had imagined.

For months, I have asked for clearer shots. Better framing. More intention. I wanted photos I could proudly post on my blog. On Facebook. Photos that told the story the way I feel it in my heart.

And for a moment -- I felt that familiar frustration again.

But then I paused.

The Powder Sky Room is no longer just paint and promise. The built-ins are there. The soft ceiling curve is real. Light enters through the window and touches the shelves gently. It is not staged -- but it is becoming.

The Blush Rose Room feels tender. The cabinetry stands steady against the pink walls. It looks quieter now. More settled.

The Lemon Meringue Room glows with warmth. Even unfinished, the yellow feels hopeful. The playful wall details are no longer sketches -- they are real and smiling back at me.

The Mint Meadow Room feels fresh and alive. The green walls hold the space gently. The pumpkin accents bring character. It is no longer just a vision I carried -- it exists.

The Lavender Haze Powder Room surprised me the most. Seeing the fixtures in place. Seeing the window framed. Seeing paint instead of bare walls. It felt like a small victory.

Are the photos perfect? No.

Are they the meaningful, carefully composed shots I have been asking for? Not quite.

But they show progress.
They show hands at work.
They show movement forward.

And I had to remind myself --

This young architect is only a couple of years older than my own daughter. Maybe she is still learning how to see the way I see. Maybe she is doing her best in ways I cannot fully measure from a distance.

Casa Arcoiris is still becoming.

So am I.

Maybe part of building a home is also building patience.
Maybe part of creating something beautiful is learning to extend grace.
Maybe part of growth is choosing to see what is working -- even when it is not perfect.

This house is rising.
Slowly.
Imperfectly.
Honestly.

And perhaps that is how forgiveness begins --

Not in grand gestures.
But in softer eyes.
In choosing understanding over anger.
In choosing progress over perfection.

Casa Arcoiris is teaching me that dreams do not have to be flawless to be real.

They just have to keep moving.

And maybe, in learning to build this house, I am also learning how to build a softer heart. Perhaps this home is not just teaching me about design -- but about grace, forgiveness, and growing beyond my own expectations. Casa Arcoiris may not be perfect yet -- but neither am I. And we are both becoming, one patient layer at a time.