I remember you first as sunlight, you reflected off of your father’s face the first time we met.
Brown-round.
Warm sunshine,
Sweet hair catching it,
skin warm as August,
your Dobby-laughter filling the rooms of our home that felt permanent back then.
We were a circle—your father, you, me—
hands linked, only tiny cracks that we tried not to fall through.
You had a joyous childhood, my love.
Let me say that plainly.
Soft mornings, bedtime stories, angel-protection prayers.
a mother and father who adored you
in the ordinary, devoted way
A way that feels invisible until it’s gone.
They are three together
They are for each other.
Something broke—
not all at once, not with thunder,
but with a quiet tearing I couldn’t stop.
The togetherness slipped through my fingers
while I was busy surviving,
busy believing love could wait, that I could somehow protect you from the glorious sadness.
What I would do differently if time could travel. What I would give to hear your contagious, silly laughter.
I see you now, searching.
Trying on selves like coats that don’t quite fit,
asking the world who you are
because the answer no longer lives at home.
I carry the guilt of that—
that our choices bent the ground beneath you, an uneven surface, that
your certainty didn’t survive.
But your sunlight did. It always will.
If I could give you one thing,
it would be this truth:
you are not unfinished. You are always enough, and you’re so wanted.
You are a beautiful sunlight girl earth-child.
You are not lost because we failed to stay whole.
You are always enough.
You were loved then, deeply, sunlight girl.
and you are loved now beyond measure—
by me in ways I don’t always know how to say,
by your father in his own quirky language,
By your Creator who never changes and has no tiny cracks in His Foundation.
Never change.
And by a life that has been watching you, and waiting.
Even in the ruins, love remains. Light breaks through.
Even in my guilt, this love never left you. My love, the love I love the most.
And you are still becoming, my beautiful brunette, warm sunlight girl,
it is not because you were broken—
it is because you are alive,
and loved in more ways than you could possibly know.
Keep sending your precious rays.
Love,
Mama
