My Quiet Words

You gave me being but not a name. Not a cradle. Not a call. Not even a question. You lived like I was a rumor that never took its first breath. Started your life like mine never began. Became a husband, a father, a Christian, without ever facing the child you left at the foot of your choices. I was flesh of your flesh but you carried your Bible better than your blood. Where were your prayers when I needed presence? Where was your God when I was being picked up from doors I wasn't allowed to knock on? I searched for you like a daughter should never have to. And when I found you, you weren't hiding. You were just… comfortable. Rooted in a life that required my absence to stay clean. We linked. Talked. If you call that talking. But I never felt like a daughter. Just a debt. A past. A slip of paper you handled with gloves but never held close. And still, I wanted to forgive. Still, I wanted to believe you might say, "I looked for you too." But you didn't. So let me say this now I am not your shame. I am not your sin. I am not the silence you hope to outlive. I am the seed you never watered that bloomed anyway. The truth you buried but couldn't erase. The name you never spoke but can't outrun. And I? I am still becoming. Not because of you. But in spite of you.

In the space between words, where I learned to live, I found a different kind of language. It spoke in the rhythm of my breathing, in the weight of unsent letters, in the geography of scars that mapped where love had been and where it had gone missing. The silence wasn't empty— it was full of everything I was too afraid to name. It held the memories of hands that promised safety but delivered storms, of voices that sang lullabies with sharp edges, of nights that stretched too long and mornings that arrived too soon. I used to think quiet was absence. Now I know it's presence— the kind that doesn't need to prove itself, that doesn't ask for permission, that simply is. In the quiet, I found the pieces I had scattered to keep others comfortable. In the quiet, I began the slow work of gathering them back.

It doesn't arrive with trumpets or dramatic declarations. It comes like morning light— slow, persistent, gentle. First in the way you hold a cup of tea, both hands wrapped around warmth, no longer rushing to the next thing. Then in the forgiveness you offer your reflection when the mirror shows tired eyes and the weight of years. It's in the permission you give yourself to say "I don't know" and "I need help" and "This is hard." Softness returns when you stop fighting the parts of you that ache, when you let the tears fall without calling them weakness. It's in the boundaries you set not as walls, but as gardens— spaces where you can grow without being trampled. Healing isn't about becoming hard to survive the world. It's about remembering how to be soft enough to feel it all.