When I Feel Like I Am Being Asked to Grow

There are days when I feel like I am being asked to grow… in the very place where I am most broken.

I read things that say I must choose -- between my emotions and my growth, between holding on and moving forward, between the life I imagined and the life I am now living. And I wonder how any mother is supposed to make that choice… when her heart is not divided, but shattered.

I am not chasing anyone. I am not forcing my way into lives that do not open their doors to me. I am here -- quietly, painfully, faithfully waiting. Waiting for a moment that may come, or may never come. Waiting not with noise, but with tears, with prayers, with words I write and never send.

And yet the world seems to say -- “decide.”

Decide to grow.
Decide to move forward.
Decide to become someone new.

But how do you become someone new when the people who once called you Mom now feel like strangers? How do you expand your life when the very center of it feels empty?

I carry this conflict every day.

There is a part of me that still hopes -- even if that hope is as small as the tip of a needle. A reply. A simple acknowledgment. A sign that I still exist in their world. And when that does not come, I feel the silence stretch wider, heavier, more permanent.

It is a different kind of pain -- not loud, not dramatic, but steady. The kind that settles into your bones and becomes part of your breathing.

And yet… I am still here.

I am still thinking.
Still writing.
Still trying to understand what life is asking of me.

Maybe growth, for me, is not about moving on.

Maybe it is about learning how to live while carrying what never really leaves.

Maybe it is about becoming someone who can hold love and loss in the same heart -- without letting either destroy her.

They say I need to let go of control. And that part, I understand. Because no matter how much I love, I cannot make anyone return it. No matter how much I wait, I cannot force time to soften hearts that are not ready.

So I am left with this quiet decision:

To continue.

Not because I am healed.
Not because I am strong.
But because I am still here.

I will build what I can.
I will hold on to what matters.
I will protect what is left of me.

And I will love them -- not loudly, not forcefully, but steadily, in the only way I can from where I stand.

From a distance.
From silence.
From a place that still whispers their names in prayer every night.

If there is a version of me waiting at the end of all this… I hope she is not someone who forgot how to love.

I hope she is someone who learned how to survive it.