Dear Mom,

It’s funny how I always write about love but never write about you. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t know what love truly means.

It’s ironic that I constantly tackle the topics of spirituality and meditation, dismissing the fact that I meditated in your womb for nine months.

And sadly, I write about my personal experiences and my pain, forgetting that only with my head rested on your lap do I overcome them.

I used to write you plenty of letters when I was a kid. I remember spending hours coloring them and drawing hearts below the letters I had written you. I grew up and I don’t know why I stopped writing you. I bet I’d draw these hearts better than ever now.

Today, I’m writing you again—but publicly. I could have slipped this letter under your pillow but rather, I’m writing it in the place I wouldn’t be in if it weren’t for you.

I still read the words you submitted to local newspapers during the 70s. I still behold your paintings and the exhibitions you did in the 90s. I look at you and I see a version of me. Then I look at me and I know that you made me.

With every word that I write, with every painting that I create, with everything that I do, there is a part of you that expresses itself through me.

Although I have never told you this before, even if you weren’t my mother, I’d you choose you in every lifetime so I can be your daughter.

I’d choose you and wouldn’t regret it.

The older I’m growing, the more scared I get. I know one of these days one of us shall leave the other’s side and I only hope to leave before you so I won’t have to deal with the wrenching agony of losing you. I have broken all my earthly attachments, yet I always fail to break my attachment to you.

If you are my sole hindrance to enlightenment, I am happy to keep reincarnating to samsara if it meant excessively loving you.

Today, I want to thank you for giving birth to me, for being courageous enough to hold a baby within your womb for nine months.

You are the most powerful yet loving woman I have met my entire life. And luckily, you have raised me likewise and I wouldn’t be more grateful than I am today.

I want you to know that no matter where I travel, where I go, or what I choose to do, you live within me. You are my second half and no man can compete you in this.

I only wish that you live long enough until I’m ready to set you free. I wish you health, celestial protection and joy.

I’m only happy when I see you happy.

I know I have said it before and I’ll say it till forever and a day: I love you.

Your daughter, or shall I say, “yourself.”

~

Author: Elyane Youssef

Editor: Caitlin Oriel

Image: Heath Bouffard/Flickr