This Mother’s Day finds me once again sitting with the memory of my late mother.
For a long time, I believed grief would always arrive like a storm—heavy, unforgiving, impossible to carry without breaking beneath it. But somewhere along the years, the weight changed. Not because the love faded. It never could (I love you, Mom). But because time teaches the heart how to hold sorrow differently. Softer. Wiser. More gently against the ribs.
And maybe, in a world that feels increasingly harsh, I find comfort knowing she no longer has to endure any of it. She escaped the noise, the cruelty, the exhaustion of survival. There is peace in that thought, even if it aches.
I love her. I always will. We'll see you again, soon, Mom.
People rarely speak about how losing a parent leaves behind a shape inside of you that nothing else can truly fill. A permanent absence. A hollow carved exactly to their outline. But the body is miraculous in the way it tries to heal itself. Even wounds of the soul begin stitching themselves back together over time—unevenly, imperfectly, leaving scars where the flesh once split open.
And that’s okay.
Some of us carry our scars where the world can see them. Some of us carry them quietly beneath the skin. I do not mind carrying mine at all if it means honoring the woman who walked through hell just to bring me into this world.
My mother lived with a kind of courage that cannot be taught in books. The world met her at every corner with hardship, with fear, with the threat of destruction—and still she kept moving forward. Not because life was easy. Not because she wasn’t tired. But because somewhere deep in her spirit, she believed there had to be something better waiting ahead.
A better future.
A different life.
A new possibility beyond war and chaos.
She suffered in the present because she believed survival could alter the future for the people she loved. And she was right. It did.
Because of her, I am here now.
Writing.
Creating worlds.
Telling stories.
Trying, in my own way, to widen the lens through which we see each other.
I’ve always believed stories are bridges. They allow us to step outside of ourselves for a moment and look through unfamiliar eyes. To understand lives we may never personally live. To feel the heartbeat of someone whose reality exists far outside our own circles, our neighborhoods, our comfort.
Life on this earth contains countless timelines, countless struggles, countless hidden battles unfolding all at once. Entire universes exist inside other people, and most of the time we pass each other without ever realizing it.
That’s why I continue writing the stories I write, even when they exist in spaces others may overlook or fail to understand. Because I believe part of a writer’s responsibility is to challenge perspective. To invite people toward empathy. To gently loosen the chains around inherited thinking and ask:
What if there’s another way to see this?
What if freedom begins with understanding?
What if compassion is the first revolution?
I hope it doesn’t take humanity forever to learn how to truly see one another. But until then, I’ll keep writing toward that hope.
And today, more than anything, I want to thank the mothers who kept going despite every reason to collapse. The mothers who carried entire worlds on tired shoulders. The mothers who cried in silence and still found enough tenderness left to kiss their children goodnight. The mothers who endured suffering yet continued planting seeds of hope anyway.
Because that is its own kind of miracle.
To every mother who fought simply to survive another day: thank you.
The future exists because you refused to give up.
-YD
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