The Language of Flowers

by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

“I believe you can prove everyone wrong, too, Victoria. Your behavior is a choice; it isn’t who you are.”

I knew right then that you felt unworthy, that you believed yourself to be unforgivably flawed.”

If it was true that moss did not have roots, and maternal love could grow spontaneously, as if from nothing, perhaps I had been wrong to believe myself unfit to raise my daughter. Perhaps the unattached, the unwanted, the unloved, could grow to give love as lushly as anyone else.

Over time, we would learn each other, and I would learn to love her like a mother loves a daughter, imperfectly and without roots.