Today marks ten years.
Ten years since my mom died.
Ten years since I thought my life wasn’t worth living.
Ten years since I believed I couldn’t have a life at all.
And yet—I’m still here. I’ve lived. I’ve grown. I’ve lost. I’ve found myself.
I was a child carrying the weight of a caregiver. Fourteen years old and already drowning in responsibilities that weren’t mine. I didn’t just lose my mom when she died—I lost her long before that. The moment she saw me as her caretaker instead of her daughter, something broke. Something shifted. And I’ve been piecing myself back together ever since.
I talk about it now. About what happened. About how no one was there for me. About how close I came to giving up. And still, I survived.
I won’t lie and say I don’t miss her. I do. Every day.
I miss the idea of her.
I miss the version of her I never got to have.
I miss having someone to tell things to—things I now carry alone.
I wish I could tell her about the men who came and went.
About the jobs I’ve had.
About the writing that saved me.
About the awards I won.
About the companies I worked with because of that writing.
But even if she were still here, I know I couldn’t. That door was closed long ago.
No one in my family knows what she did to me.
How close she pushed me to the edge.
And I’m glad they don’t.
They get to remember her as an amazing mom, wife, tia, and person.
They get to hold onto their stories, their memories, their love.
I hope they cherish that. I really do.
But I carry something different.
I carry the silence.
The truth.
The ache.
And the clarity.
I hope to be nothing like her to my kids.
I hope to be the safe place I never had.
I hope to be the kind of mother who sees her children as children—not caretakers, not emotional crutches, not extensions of her pain.
Ten years later, I’m still healing.
Still learning.
Still growing.
Still writing.
And that, in itself, is a kind of miracle.
— Daisy 🖤
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