A Mother’s Unseen Truth

There are parts of my story I’ve never spoken aloud about, not because I was hiding but because I was trying to survive. I carried love, pain, and silence all at once. And somewhere along the way, I lost the space to express my truth.

My children say their childhood was painful. They speak of trauma, emotional wounds, of moments where they felt alone and not understood in a house that was supposed to feel like home. Hearing this shatters me in ways words can not explain because I never wanted to be the reason for their darkness.

I tried to protect them. I asked that our arguments be kept away from their eyes and ears. I tried to be the stable one, the present one. I stayed, day in and day out, when their father was often away. I chose to be a full-time mother,  not because I had no ambition but because I wanted to be the one walking beside them through every emotional storm.

But in that choice, I somehow became the villain.

While I set rules and boundaries, while I held the weight of their growing pains and emotions, the other parent became the favourite, the one who came home with gifts, not expectations. The one who said yes while I said no. The one who stood apart from the chaos while I was drowning in it.

And now, they look at me and sometimes see only the frustration. The tired voice. The broken parts. They don’t see the woman who stayed up all night worrying. The one who wrote letters in the dark just to be heard. The one who forgot her own needs to meet theirs. The one who tried to protect them from what she couldn’t even process in herself.

There are moments I replay the moments where I was misunderstood, spoken to with sharpness, made to feel invisible in the presence of my own children. And I wonder if, without knowing it, they’ve carried the distrust they witnessed growing up and placed it on me.

All I ever wanted was to be seen. It’s not as perfect. Not even as right. Just as someone who gave everything she had. Someone who stayed.

My emotions are real. My love was constant. While I will always carry the weight of my mistakes, I hope they can someday see the full picture,  not just the fragments shaped by pain.

Because underneath it all, there was always love. There still is.

Sometimes, the strongest love goes unnoticed,  not because it is absent but because it is constant. When a mother carries both the fire and the weight of the home, she may be seen as the storm when, in truth, she is the shelter. Healing begins when we dare to speak our truth, not to be right, but to be real. And maybe, just maybe, to finally be seen.