Looking for my mom

Mom

I need you

Not in the way people need answers

Or someone to tell them

Everything will be alright

I need you 

In that deep, aching way

A daughter needs her mother

When the world feels heavy.

There have been many moments

When I have wanted to reach for you

To tell you everything

To hear your voice

To sit beside you

And try and let the tears come

Without having to explain them

I wanted to be a daughter again 

Just for a while

So , I went into silence

Somewhere in nature without noise

With no questions

Without all the things that fill my head

I thought

If I become still enough

If I listen hard enough

I might hear you

I went looking for your voice in the silence

But the silence gave me something else

It gave me you

Not the way I wanted

Not as a voice from somewhere beyond me

But as feeling

A warmth

A knowing

A quiet place inside mt chest where your love  

Has been living all along

And I realized

How much I miss you

How many times

I have wished

I could just sit beside you and say

“Mom, I don’t know how to do this”

And maybe some part of you has been answering all along

Not with words

But with the pieces of you

That became pieces of me

The way I love

The way I care

The way I keep going

When I don’t think I can

The softness

I still carry

Even when my heart is hurting

You are there

In me

Maybe this is the beautiful truth I came to find

I don’t have to hear your voice

To know what you would say

I don’t have to see you

To know you are near

I don’t have to reach outside of myself

To find you 

You are woven into who I am

So somewhere between the stillness and the quiet

I found you 

Where I should have known to look all along.

Inside my heart.

When I need you now

I will close my eyes

Put my hand over my heart and listen

Because that’s where I hear you the best.