My Mother Still Sends Me People

There is a certain kind of exhaustion that comes from carrying everything alone for too long.

Not just responsibilities. Not just grief. But yourself.

Your sadness.

Your fears.

Your healing.

Your loneliness.

Your hope.

For a long time, I convinced myself that being “good alone” was strength. I wore hyper-independence like armor. I told myself I didn’t need much. I could figure it out. Carry it. Survive it. Hold myself together quietly.

But grief has a way of exposing the places where survival mode no longer works.

This Mother’s Day weekend felt especially heavy. The kind of heavy that settles in your chest before you even open your eyes in the morning. On Thursday, I left work early because the sadness became unbearable. I could feel it all over me.

Before I walked out, I stopped to talk to the security guard downstairs, an older Black woman I always speak to. Usually her eyes are full of warmth and light. This time, they looked sad.

At first I wondered if I was projecting….but grief recognizes grief.

I asked her, “Why you over there looking so sad?”

She told me she had to visit the cemetery this weekend. She lost her mother in 2023 to cancer.

I told her I lost mine in 2024.

And just like that, two women standing in a lobby, trying not to cry in front of each other, understood something without needing to explain it fully.

She hugged me and said, “Don’t do it alone.”

Those words have followed me all weekend.

Don’t do it alone.

Later that weekend, while I was out at the movies trying to distract myself, my older cousin and great aunt randomly called me because they were nearby. Normally I probably would’ve said I was tired or stayed in my own little world, but instead I drove to Perimeter Mall to see them.

We walked around Dillard’s. My aunt had just bought herself a new bag. Then we went to eat at Louisiana Bistreaux and just sat together talking and laughing.

It was simple.

But it felt like medicine.

And honestly? It felt like my mother.

My mom isn’t sneaky. Even from the spiritual realm, she is still organizing things, still micromanaging, still putting people exactly where they need to be before I even realize I need them.

That’s how I know love doesn’t disappear.

I think part of my grief has been desperately searching for the kind of love my mother gave me, trying to find echoes of it everywhere else. But I’m learning that a mother’s love is one in a million. I will never fully recreate it outside of her.

And maybe I’m not supposed to. Maybe that’s the whole point.

Because that love did not vanish when she left this earthly realm. It lives inside me now.

In the way I care for people.

In the softness I still carry despite everything.

In my ability to nurture.

In my ability to thrive.

In the way I still believe in love after so much pain and loss.

I was venting to my sister Jada recently about how alone I’ve been feeling. I told her I wished she lived closer. I told her I wished I had more friends who enjoyed the calm, soft things I enjoy. Sometimes it feels like too much to place on my sister Chelsea, too much to place on the few people I lean on consistently.

And Jada reminded me of something I think I desperately needed to hear:

Appreciate what you have now.

One day, God willing, there may be a spouse. There may be children. There may be a house full of noise and love and responsibility. And one day I may actually miss this little apartment. My plants. My solitude. My freedom. The quiet and stillness.

That shifted something in me.

Because I realized sometimes I spend so much time focusing on what’s missing that I overlook what’s already here.

I have sisters who love me deeply.

I have friends who check on me.

I have family members who show up for me unexpectedly.

I have people trying to help me carry this grief.

And maybe calling in more love starts there.

Maybe if I want to trust new connections, I first have to trust the connections I already have. Maybe if I want deeper friendship, partnership, community, and intimacy one day, I have to stop rejecting the love currently surrounding me simply because it doesn’t look exactly how I imagined.

Love is still love.

Even if it comes through a cousin calling unexpectedly.

Even if it comes through a security guard hugging you in a lobby.

Even if it comes through sisters answering the phone every single time.

Even if it comes through a great aunt buying herself a new purse and insisting you come eat with them.

Love is still love.

And from this day forward, I am making a promise to myself:

I will stop carrying everything alone.

I will accept help.

I will accept softness.

I will accept community.

I will accept being cared for.

I will release the need to control everything.

I will release hyper-independence as a survival strategy.

Because surviving is not the same thing as living.

And maybe peace begins the moment we allow ourselves to be held by the people who have already been loving us all along.