Letters I Never Sent to My Mother

Letters I Never Sent to My Mother

Genre: Writers / Personal Essay

Letter One

Age 9

Hi Mom,

Today we learned how to write a letter in school.

I wanted to write to you because I miss you. You were at work again, and I ate dinner with Dad. He made pasta and didn’t talk much. I wish you had been there.

I wore the sweater you like—the red one. The sleeves are too short now.

I don’t know what to say, really. I guess I just wanted you to notice me.

Love,

Your daughter (remember me?)

Letter Two

Age 14

Mom,

You said I was being dramatic today. That I was just “going through a phase.”

But it doesn’t feel like a phase when my chest tightens for no reason.

It doesn’t feel like a phase when I cry in the bathroom and pretend it’s allergies.

You always said to be strong, but you never showed me what strong looked like when it’s gentle.

Sometimes I wonder if you were scared, too.

If being hard was how you survived.

I wish you had told me that.

—M

Letter Three

Age 17

I cleaned the kitchen because you were tired, and you didn’t say thank you.

You just walked past me and said, “Finally.”

Do you know how many times I rehearsed doing that right?

The plate order. The counter wipes. The angle of the chairs.

I don’t know what hurts more: your silence or your standards.

I started writing poems in a notebook I hide in my backpack.

They all sound like I’m trying to get your attention without saying it out loud.

Sometimes I think I write because you never listened.

Letter Four

Age 22

You came to my graduation and clapped like it was an obligation.

You told Aunt Ruth that I was “finally getting my act together.”

I’ve been getting it together in pieces for years.

You just never looked closely enough to see.

After the ceremony, you hugged me like it was for a photo.

Stiff. Quick. Smiling for someone else’s benefit.

I wanted to say, “Look. I made it. Even though you never really believed I would.”

But I swallowed it. Like always.

I don’t know why I still crave your pride like oxygen.

Letter Five

Age 27

Mom,

You called last week. I didn’t answer.

You left a message saying I was “cold” and that you “don’t recognize me anymore.”

Maybe because I stopped apologizing for everything.

Maybe because I stopped bending myself into a version of me you could tolerate.

I’m in therapy now.

We talk about boundaries. About grief with the person still alive.

About how you can love someone and still wish they had loved you better.

I keep thinking:

If I become a mother someday, I want to be nothing like you.

But then I think: maybe you were just trying your best with what you had.

That thought is almost more painful.

Letter Six

Age 31

You sent me a birthday card.

It said, “Proud of the woman you’ve become.”

That sentence made me cry for twenty minutes.

Because part of me still needed it.

And another part of me didn’t believe it was true.

What changed? Did I finally become someone worth loving in your eyes?

Or did you realize how far I’d drifted?

Either way, I didn’t call you back.

I’m not punishing you. I’m just protecting the parts of me I had to grow without you.

I wish you'd written more than that.

I wish you had written anything when I was younger.

Letter Seven

Now

You’re gone.

I found out through a cousin I barely talk to.

You were in hospice, and no one told me.

Would I have come?

I don’t know.

But it feels cruel that I wasn’t given the choice.

I keep waiting to feel something neat and boxable.

But grief doesn’t work like that.

I feel everything at once. And then nothing.

I walked through your old house last week.

It smelled like dust and lavender.

I found my baby shoes in a drawer next to unopened letters addressed to no one.

Did you write to me, too?

Did you have your own stack of things you never sent?

Final Letter

Mom,

There’s so much I wish I could tell you now.

That I forgave you quietly, years ago.

That I carry your stubbornness like a torch and your sharp tongue like a warning.

That sometimes I talk to you in my head when I’m driving alone at night.

There’s a line from a poem I wrote last year:

"Some loves are not soft, but they are still love."

You were not soft.

But you were mine.

And that’s enough, sometimes, to write the letter—even if I never send it.

Love,

Your daughter

Still writing.