Letters to My Mother: What I Wish I Had Said

From the Silence

Dear Mom,

I was 17 when you asked if I was gay, and I lied. I saw the worry in your eyes and chose what I thought was the easier path for both of us. For a decade after, we talked about everything except that central truth of who I am.

What I wish I'd said then: "Yes, I am. And I'm still the same person you've always loved."

I never gave you the chance to surprise me with your capacity for growth. By the time I finally told you the truth at 27, you looked at me with such sadness—not because of who I am, but because of all the years I carried that weight alone.

"I knew," you said. "I was just waiting for you to trust me."

You had been waiting for me while I had been hiding from you. Ten years of distance that we can never get back.

You've been gone three years now, and we did make up for lost time in the years we had left. You walked beside me at Pride. You welcomed my partners into our home. You defended me to relatives.

But I still wish I'd been brave enough to trust you sooner.

With love and regret,
Thomas

What Your Hands Built

Mom,

I never thanked you properly for working those three jobs. At the time, I only saw your absence—empty chairs at school performances, missed dinners, the endless babysitters.

I didn't see what those hours away were building for us: a stable home when others were losing theirs, opportunities you never had, the foundation for everything I would become.

I can still picture your hands—always dry, nails cut short for practicality, that small burn scar from the diner on your left wrist. Those hands that never stopped moving. Typing medical records at dawn, serving food through the afternoon, cleaning offices while I slept.

What I wish I'd said before Alzheimer's took your memories: Thank you for those beautiful, tireless hands and everything they sacrificed to hold our world together.

You don't remember those years now. Sometimes you don't remember me. But I promise you, Mom—I remember enough for both of us.

Your daughter,
Jade

The Ocean Between Us

Umma,

When we arrived in America, you stopped singing. In Korea, you sang constantly—in the kitchen, in the garden, walking to the market. But in America, your voice went quiet.

As I grew up and grew ashamed of our differences, I never asked why the music stopped. I was too busy trying to be American, correcting your accent, rolling my eyes when you spoke Korean in front of my friends.

What I wish I'd asked: "Will you teach me the songs your mother sang to you?"

After you died, I found the recordings—cassette tapes of you singing the folk songs of your childhood, dated the year we arrived. You had been singing in private all those years, preserving the melodies I had rejected.

I play them for my daughter now. She is learning the songs I refused, building a bridge across the ocean I placed between us.

Forgive me for the silence I contributed to.
Your son who finally hears you,
Min-ho

A Different Kind of Strong

Dear Mom,

For years, I mistook your softness for weakness. Your tears, your open heart, your vulnerability—I saw these as liabilities in a world that rewards hardness. "Don't be so sensitive," I would tell you, believing I was helping.

What I wish I'd understood sooner: Your sensitivity was never weakness; it was a different kind of strength.

It takes tremendous courage to feel everything as deeply as you do. To cry with a neighbor over their loss. To let the news of suffering across the world break your heart. To love without armor.

When my own child was diagnosed, it was your kind of strength I needed—not stoicism, but the ability to bend without breaking, to honor pain without being destroyed by it, to let love be bigger than fear.

Thank you for showing me that the world doesn't need more people too tough to be touched. It needs more people like you, with hearts porous enough to let others in.

I am proud to be your daughter and to inherit your particular courage.

With new understanding,
Rachel

The Questions I Should Have Asked

Mom,

I knew you as Mother, but rarely asked about you as woman. Before illness took you too young, I should have asked:

What did you dream of becoming before you had us?
Did you ever regret the paths not taken?
Were you truly happy with Dad, or did you settle?
What were you most proud of that had nothing to do with us children?
Who were you before you were my mother?

I collected facts instead of truth—your birthday, your favorite color, where you went to school. But I never dove beneath these surface details to the deeper waters of your actual life.

Now, at 45, I'm older than you ever got to be, and the questions multiply while answers fade with those who knew you.

What I wish I'd said: "Tell me your story—not as my mother, but as yourself."

To the woman I should have known better,
Michael