Home to Myself: A Love Letter After Loss

Hello, dear self. It’s been a while.

I’m not sure where to begin, but I know we needed to have this moment. A pause. A breath. A space where truth can rise. You’ve been through so much—words barely scratch the surface. Even when we say, „I’m okay,” the body whispers otherwise. The aches, the pressure, the pulsing… It’s our soul calling us back. Asking us not to run, but to stay. To feel.

So here I am, and I want to say: I’m sorry.

I wasn’t as brave as I pretended to be. I didn’t know how to navigate losing our mom, and all the grief that came crashing with it. Part of me tried to be strong, while another part longed to disappear into the past, when she was alive, laughing, whole. Our mom.

There were days we wondered if we cried enough. If we did enough. And nights when guilt sat heavy in our chest. Wishing we could’ve saved her. Held her tighter. Frozen time. But the truth is, her passing was never in our control. Her soul answered a higher calling—God’s timing, not ours. And though that parting shattered us, it wasn’t our fault. It was written, as hard as that is to accept.

We are learning now to live with the memories. To hold them with more peace and less ache. To love her beyond this realm, and let her love continue to guide us, spirit to spirit.

If she could speak to us today, I believe she’d smile and say, “I had to go. It was my time. But you, my love, you still have living to do.”

She’d want us to come home. Home to our body. To listen when it aches. To stop treating pain as something to push through, and instead, as something sacred to sit with. She’d want us to rest. To stop running. To breathe.

She’d want us to return to our heart and stop chasing perfection. To embrace our humanness—our flaws, our tenderness, our enough-ness. She always saw our worth, even when we didn’t. And she never needed more from us than love. We gave her that. We still do.

So no more guilt. No more punishing ourselves with self-neglect or shame. Let’s choose gentleness. Let’s believe, finally, that we are enough.

And thank you. Thank you, dear self, for surviving the unthinkable. For standing at that funeral, trembling in the cold. For going through endless appointments, hospital nights, and still showing up. Thank you for not giving up on us. For every breath, you kept going. For letting yourself find God in all of it.

Thank you for praying, for kneeling, for walking back into churches with shaking hands. For trying. For choosing healing even when it hurts.

Now it’s time to be strong—not in the way the world expects, but in the way that roots a tree: calm, grounded, alive in stillness.

We don’t need the world to understand us. We need to understand ourselves. We are not broken. We are growing.

Let’s keep moving forward. Eating with care. Moving with love. Speaking with grace. Let’s be kind, not because others deserve it, but because our soul does. Let’s be present in our own unique way—in our sacred, human, imperfect way.

We’re not done. We’re just beginning.

With all the love in the world, Me