These hands are meant to hold.

twloha:

Mom,

I don’t even know what to call you; legally or personally because you’ve never been real before. Not real to me. You’ve always been just some person that I imagined. You’re just someone who abandoned me.

Who left me.

Even though you could take care of three other kids, I was too much. Because you didn’t think that you could fight. Fight to raise me as your daughter. You didn’t want the extra trouble. You didn’t want the hassle.

You didn’t want me.

So you gave me up to people that you didn’t even know, to a life that you didn’t have to be a part of. I wanted to find you. Run into your arms. To cry. To scream. To question you. I needed answers, even if I knew you wouldn’t have all of them.

“’Cause this is not about what you’ve done,
But what’s been done for you.”

For years and years I carried around this burden, not like a chip, but more like a mountain on my shoulder weighing me down. Because if I wasn’t good enough for my own mother, I wasn’t good enough for anyone. I was so mad at you, caught up in this place of anger and confusion.

But that’s changed. I never thought that I’d be able to be okay with all of this. I’ve healed a bit, maybe not fully but enough to feel something different toward you than before—gratitude.

Thank you for letting me go. You did the right thing.

“This is not about where you’ve been,
But where your brokenness brings you to.”

It’s true that you left me, but it’s also true that you gave me away, and maybe in that you gave me a chance. If you hadn’t given me away, so many things would’ve ended up differently.

I wouldn’t have gotten this incredible education that empowered me to seek out new information and gave me a love for literature. I wouldn’t have spent my summers on the Outer Banks of North Carolina where I fell in love with sailing and learned how to be a friend and a leader. Without a doctor as a father, Graves’ disease would’ve taken an even greater toll on my body than it already had. I wouldn’t have become a swimmer and then never had the opportunity to go to boarding school to pursue college scholarships. I probably wouldn’t have gone to Auburn University, a place that stretched and grew me, where I learned to rise to a challenge and to love in a whole way.

“You are more than the choices that you’ve made.
You are more than the sum of your past mistakes.”

I almost blamed you for all of my darkness. It would be easy to do. I was raised in a place I didn’t come from and felt like I’ve never belonged. Truth is, my life wouldn’t have been guaranteed to be less hard or dark or difficult if you had kept me. Maybe I would’ve even been hurt more and not had the resources I needed to be healthy or the people who helped pull me back together.

Maybe, just maybe, you helped save me.

“You are more than the problems you create.
You’ve been remade.”

I forgive you. Forgiveness may not be something you need from me, but it’s something I’ve needed to give you for a long time. I am learning my way through this life, stumbling and growing and loving. Maybe we can meet, or just chat, someday, but if we never do, know that I’m okay.

Thanks to you, of course.

—Caitlin

So honored to call this girl a friend.  Since I have known her, she has shown such strength, grace, bravery, courage, and honesty.  Thank you for making me a better person.  

This is one of the most difficult things I have ever written.  I will always be incredibly grateful for the experience I have had as an intern for TWLOHA.  A lot of people never get the opportunity to talk about the struggles I do everyday.  Brokenness is okay.  I really hope you enjoy my SOTW.

twloha:

“Without You”
Ben Rector

I think there is a moment for everyone that changes the course of your life. For me, that moment was waking up at 2 AM to my mom’s cries. Lying in bed waiting, then with my ears pressed against the door trying to hear what was happening, knowing in the pit of my stomach it couldn’t be good.

Waiting, waiting, waiting.

I dreaded the sound of my parents walking up the stairs to my room, and I pretended to be asleep so they wouldn’t think I was spying on them. Finally I got the news that made my heart stop and my world crumble. “Pop is dead,” they told me.

“The truth is waking up in me. I can’t hide. I can’t hide.”

Pop was my grandfather, the one person who meant more to me than I could ever imagine someone meaning. I can remember walking around his backyard as a little girl, playing in my green turtle sandbox, and picking apples and cherries from the trees that grew into his back porch. I remember always being able to find him in the mornings, after my mom dropped us off by his pond, feeding the ducks or planting seeds in what seemed like the largest farm I had ever seen.

I hate that I never got to tell him how much I loved him.

“Doesn’t matter where I go, when I’m without you, I am low. Without you. Without you. I’ve been low and lost without you.”

I think it’s easy to blame people for the deaths of others, but it’s even harder to place the blame when it seems to belong to someone you know, someone in your own family. Pop was killed in a car accident. My uncle was driving the car. The drive from the beach back to my house is only two hours, but my uncle took one last line of cocaine before they left, and no one knew it.

He offered to drive while he was high. Thirty minutes from home, he lost control of the car, for whatever reason, and they crossed the west bound lane, into the embankment, onto the east bound lane, and finally came to a stop because of a fence blocking the homes on the other side of the highway.

The days that followed were some of the hardest my family has ever faced. Losing anyone is hard, but uncovering secrets that other family members have kept for too long, in the midst of losing another, is even worse. Broken ribs, fractured limbs, and bruises heal, but I wasn’t so sure the lies, deception, and secrets would ever feel smaller than they did in those days.

“You can’t see that inside me, there are things that I can’t bear. You can’t see inside of me.”

My uncle is an addict. It’s not past tense, and it is something that he will have to live with and fight against for the rest of his life. These issues that so many people face shouldn’t be wrapped in silence. I truly believe in the open and honest conversations that TWLOHA tells everyone to have, but I know first hand how difficult they can be. I remember 15-year-old me learning about all of this and realizing how much pain can come from an addiction, how the pain ripples out to affect more than the person struggling. It breaks my heart.

Forgiveness is never easy, and it’s something I’m working on. My uncle has been clean for a couple years now, but I struggle to grant him the grace he deserves. I took care of my mom so much after the accident because I could never imagine losing her the way she lost her father, and I blamed my uncle for it. I think part of me is still healing.

“I thought that I could make this right. The only thing that I could find is that I’ve been low and lost without you by my side.”

I miss my grandfather so much, and I wish there would have been something that I could have done. I wish he could have seen me graduate high school. I wish he would be at my wedding. I wish he could have taught life lessons to the children that I may have someday, and I wish he could have lived the long, happy life he deserved. I wish I didn’t have to carry this weight around with me, tethering me toward hate.

I wish I could forgive my uncle. I hope I can forgive my uncle.

“Without you. Without you. I’ve been low and lost without you.”

It’s been seven years, but I am finally softening toward hope.

—Krista
Spring 2012 Intern