When my mother was alive, I struggled to find a Mother's Day card that reflected how I truly felt. 

Our relationship was layered.

Complicated.

Human.

And isn't it ironic...

that after she passed, I found myself writing chapters instead.

Not because the pain disappeared, but because time, grief, motherhood, and life itself softened something in me enough to finally see her more fully,

As a child, my relationship with my mother was not tender. 

She was a source of fear and pain. I longed for warmth from her in ways I could not always feel. 

And yet now, looking back as a mother myself, I understand more clearly:

my mother loved with the tools she had. 

Not perfectly.

Not always softly. 

Not in the ways I once deeply needed. 

But somewhere beneath her own wounds, exhaustion, conditioning, and survival...

there was love. 

She doesn't hold grudges. 

She doesn't keep score. 

When she helps, she simply helps.

She does not count good deeds or measure wrongs.

She just loves.

And perhaps now, beyond the body, beyond the misunderstandings of this life--

she has returned to her original state:

Love. 

Isn't it ironic that the woman I once believed didn't know how to love me

still had so much to teach me about love?

Because love is not always spoken in the ways we long for as children,

Sometimes love arrives imperfectly.

Sometimes through sacrifice.

Sometimes through survival.

Sometimes through simply continuing.

Maybe wisdom comes in spaces after loss.

In the quiet places where resentment softens just enough

for understanding to enter.

I used to think it was too late.

Too late to bring her here to my home.

Too late to sit longer.

Too late to ask more questions.

Too late to love her differently.

When she was alive, she would often say she wanted to get out of the house more. I would tell her I would pick her

up and bring her here. "Soon," I'd say.

And somehow... life kept moving.

Now there are moments when sadness quietly enters me knowing she never got to see the home I live in now.

But perhaps love does not end where the body does.

Maybe it continues through remembrance.

Through forgiveness.

Through the way I now love my own children, myself, and the people around me.

And then there are the little things. The things I barely noticed when she was alive.

The things that now make me laugh out loud because somehow...there she is again.

Each time I turn my plate while Kayla is leaving the house as I'm eating, I hear my mother in my head warning me not to offend the food spirits.

The way to move in a new home: bring salt, rice, and sugar and hang a brown scapular at the door for good luck and protection.

The way to always keep canned goods in the pantry in case guests unexpectedly arrive hungry at your door.

All the little ways she moved through life quietly permeated ours.

At the time, they simply felt like "Mom being Mom."

Now I undserstand:

these were not habits. They were inheritance.

Culture.

Care.

Memory.

Love expressed through ordinary living.

And somehow, after she was gone, I began noticing how much of her still lived in us.

In me. And now in my children too.

The things we inherit from our mothers are not always spoken directly.

Sometimes they arrive through gestures.

Rituals.

Instincts.

Laughter in the kitchen.

Ways of tending a home.

Ways of feeding people.

Ways of protecting life.

And perhaps this is how love continues across generations:

quietly,

persistenly,

through the smallest things.

As today we live with her in us.

And someday, our children will carry pieces of us too.

Maybe some relationships are too layered, too human, too unfinished to fit neatly inside greeting cards.

Some loves can only be understood through time, grief, forgiveness, and remembrance.

My mother's life did not end with her death.

Parts of her continue through me.

And perhaps this is one of the greatest lessons she left behind:

Love is not something we simply feel.

Love is something we become willing to live.