What My Mother and I Don't Talk About: Fifteen Writers Break the Silence (What We Don't Talk About Book 1)

by Michele Filgate

I know my parents love and miss me. I, too, deeply mourn all that we lost. But I have reached the bottom of my own particular well. There is compassion here but not much hope for connection beyond that. When I leave my childhood house, my parents stand outside, waving. She on the front steps, he on the edge of the lawn. They wave and wave as I drive away. They will not go into the house until they lose sight of me. They keep waving until they are very small, like tiny children, in my rearview mirror and then they are gone. Then slowly I can remember that I have made a different path for myself. I have found the ones who know my heart and keep it safe. I have created myself as someone who, on most days, I like, respect, and love. I have made my way into myself and learned that love, too, is contagious. I have learned that healing is possible. That we can make lives that we couldn’t even have imagined when we were little and that we can carry the little ones who we were into these new and luminous lives.