The Myth of Enough (a mother’s reckoning)

I did everything different.
Broke the blueprint,
rewrote the vows handed down in silence.
I chose softness where there was stone.
I offered words where there had been withdrawal.
I gave and gave and gave
until the giving itself became the prayer.

And still…
they ache.
Still, I see the flicker of pain
behind their eyes,
the old ghost that somehow found them,
despite all my guarding.

It guts me—
to know that love isn't a shield,
that even the fiercest mother
cannot undo what life insists on teaching.

So I sit in the ache,
not as punishment,
but as ritual.
I let it sting,
because some wounds
deserve to be honored before they’re released.

Maybe there is no right way.
No sacred formula.
Maybe all of us—
the mothers, the daughters,
the sons, the wanderers—
are just trying to find the thread
between too much and not enough.

And maybe, just maybe,
healing isn’t the erasure of pain,
but the choice to love anyway.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai