Echoes of Mother

~ Written May 10, 2025. Reflections on maternal love, early loss, and the strength that blooms in healing. A mother’s love lingers long after she’s gone… in memory, in breath, in every step toward healing and becoming.

Not too many days pass without me still thinking of her… Mother’s Day, her birthday, holidays, and the days leading up to them… all the prominent milestones of my own life she missed… being the most deeply felt.

At just 34 years old, so beautifully young, you left this world of form… and I, the one you birthed into it, remained.

I’ve since lost the handwritten letter you once wrote, where you said you remembered well how I grasped your finger tightly upon my birth, as if to say, “I am strong, Momma.” You wrote that, and you said you knew the name Mark was fitting… that I would be a warrior.

There is no love like that of a mother when she is at her height. Even in her worst, she is grace… and full of lessons.

You live eternally within me, and I honor you with my gentleness, which you remind me is great strength. I honor you each day with all I have transcended… that darkness of addiction and brokenness. That land of dysfunction I have turned into fields of flowers… and my castle has become my own heart.

I see you and meet you still, again and again, in every glorious Divine Feminine that crosses my path. I feel you in the wind, and in my very breath… the breath you witnessed first.

Oh Mother… it was not in vain.
Although you left, I would have you know that I now live more fully and completely… tending to my own heart’s needs in ways I never knew I could.

Thank you.
Thank you.

~ Shambo