Letter to mum

If you’ve ever lost someone dear, or feel the aching weight of absence in your life, you know the deep despair, the tortured heart.

Five weeks after my sister passed away, my mum left us quietly too, under the cover of night, years of suffering at an end. A brain haemorrhage had taken her voice and paralysed most of her body.

And yet she stayed.

For my dad. For us.

The dance of relief and grief.

Relief and grief swamped me, my heart cleaved in two. When asked who wanted to write something for her funeral, a spark stirred in me—a Phoenix rising from the ashes—and I said yes. But the words wouldn’t come.

Until one early morning, the sun waiting to kiss the day awake, a letter tumbled out from my heart onto paper, my vision too blurry to read it until I had typed it up. And even then, the tears wouldn’t stop.

The power of shared love

The letter didn’t just touch my heart—it touched everyone who read it, who heard it at the funeral. Because we’re all daughters and sons. All born through our mothers, all connected from beginning to end, and even beyond.

Finding ourselves

Loss asks so much of us, but it also reveals our strength, our resilience, our capacity for love that endures. Writing, remembering, sharing memories—they’re all parts of our healing journey, all necessary to grief, to letting go and letting life in, to pick up the broken pieces of our hearts and find ourselves again.

Daily invitation

How do you keep love alive when someone you cherish is gone? How do you cherish yourself in these troubling times and allow healing to happen?

Dear Mum,

I miss you. Your laughter. Your voice. Your embrace.

Your hands, how they hold me, how they caress my hair, my face.

Your words, how they protect me, strengthen and love me.

Your heart, how it carries me.

Your ears, how they listen to me, so patiently, so lovingly.

Your eyes, your gaze, filled with love, with light, illuminating my days and my nights.

Your softness, your strength, how they permeate me.

Your love, how it let’s me grow.

I miss you. In the small moments. In the big ones. When I look at my children, in whom you continue to live, who awaken you inside me.

I miss you. In the stars that bear gifts to the night sky, in which I find you.

I miss you. Your touch, your soul, simply you. Your presence in my life.

And even if you’re far, far away, are you always here, always close. In my heart, well protected. Always nurturing. Always loving. Always loved. Never forgotten.

Thank you, Mum. For all that you were and are.

I love you.

Your daughter Elisabeth