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.

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.

Healing That Happens Without Closure

Healing after abandonment is not the same as reconciliation.

It does not begin with apologies.
It does not require explanations.
And it does not wait for someone else to come back.

This healing begins in the quiet decision to stop bleeding in public for wounds no one tends.

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from being abandoned --
not once, but repeatedly,
through silence,
through absence,
through the slow realization that you are no longer considered.

For a long time, I believed healing meant understanding why.
Why they pulled away.
Why love changed shape.
Why I was no longer chosen.

But healing began when I accepted that some answers are withheld --
and waiting for them only deepens the wound.

This does not mean I stopped loving.
It means I stopped chasing love that would not stay.

Healing is learning how to hold myself with the same care I once poured outward.
It is choosing dignity over desperation.
It is setting my heart down gently instead of throwing it forward again.

Some days, healing feels like strength.
Other days, it feels like quiet restraint.

But it is happening.

Not because the situation changed --
but because I did.

I am learning that abandonment does not get to define my worth.
It does not erase my history.
It does not cancel the love I gave in good faith.

Healing, for me, is not forgetting.
It is standing rooted even when nothing returns.

And that is how I move forward now --
slowly, honestly, and whole enough to continue.