Eggshellent Ideas

Before life rearranged me, I made art from broken things.

I glued colorful beads onto my drawing of the side-view face of the Madonna gazing at her Child, sketched on bond paper. I pressed sequins into place with hands that believed details mattered. To this day, that piece remains in my collection of childhood keepsakes.

Later, I crushed eggshells and laid them, piece by piece, into a larger Madonna and Child image. This time, I painted over the shells, turning fragments into form. I called the project “Eggshellent Ideas.” My mom framed it -- not because it was flawless, but because she saw something in me worth preserving.

I believed fragments could become sacred if handled with care.

I did not know I would one day become the fragment.

I fell in love. I married. I grew up fast. I became a wife before I understood partnership and a mother before I finished understanding myself. And then I did what many women do -- I endured.

From 1996 to 2018, I stayed in a marriage that did not make me happy. I raised my children. I fed them, worried over them, worked for them. I was tired. I was imperfect. I was overwhelmed. But I was trying.

Trying does not come with applause.

When I finally chose to let go -- when I chose air over suffocation -- I believed the worst was over.

I was wrong.

Years later, my children decided I am a bad mother. Not flawed. Not human. Bad. Worthy of distance. Worthy of silence.

There is no gentle way to absorb that.

To my children, M and G -- I was not perfect. I made mistakes. I was young. I was exhausted. I chose freedom when I could no longer survive inside my own life. But I did not stop loving you both. I did not abandon you. I did not erase my devotion because my marriage ended.

You may see me through your pain. I cannot control that. But I will not accept a version of myself that erases the years I carried you in my body and in my bones.

I was a trying mother.
That is the truth.

I have no regrets.

I cannot regret surviving. I cannot regret choosing breath. I made decisions with the strength and knowledge I had at the time. None of us raise children with the clarity of hindsight.

I feel unlucky.

Unlucky that love did not last.
Unlucky that freedom came with a cost.
Unlucky that my motherhood is being rewritten without me.

But I am not ashamed.

The girl who made art from broken shells is still here. Life handed me fracture after fracture, and I am still assembling something that holds.

Because broken does not mean worthless.

If I could turn shattered shells into something worthy of framing, I can do the same with the pieces of myself.

They may step away -- but I remain.

The Sum Of Our Choices

A few days ago, I watched a movie.

One line pierced through me --

“Our lives are not defined by any one action. Our lives are the sum of our choices.”

And I sat there thinking --

Then why does it feel like my entire life has been reduced to one?

One decision.
One turning point.
One choice to leave a marriage that was slowly destroying me.

Right now, it feels like that single act has swallowed everything else.

The years I stayed.
The years I endured.
The years I protected my children from things they never even knew I carried.

Gone.

Erased.

Rewritten into a simple narrative --
“She left.”

As if that one action cancels decades of love.

As if that one chapter defines the whole book.

And the punishment feels relentless.

The silence.
The emotional distance.
The subtle way I am treated like I fractured something sacred beyond repair.

I am hurting in ways I cannot fully explain.

My body aches.
My chest feels tight.
My mind replays every decision like a courtroom where I am both accused and judge.

Was that one choice enough to make me unworthy?

Was survival a crime?

Because some days, the message I feel from my own children is this --

You chose wrong.
And now you live with it.

But if our lives are the sum of our choices, then mine is not one moment.

I chose to stay when leaving would have been easier.
I chose to keep the peace for their sake.
I chose to put them first -- over pride, over comfort, over self.

I chose love, over and over again.

And I chose to leave only when staying was costing me my sanity.

That is not selfishness.

That is a mother reaching her breaking point.

Yet here I am, living as though that one action outweighs every other choice I made in devotion.

The pain is raw.

Not poetic.

Raw.

It feels like being slowly cut out of the very lives I once built around bedtime stories and school mornings and whispered prayers.

If my life is the sum of my choices, then I refuse to let it be defined by this one.

I will not let my identity collapse into a single decision.

I am more than that moment.

I am the years of sacrifice.
The nights of worry.
The unconditional love that did not withdraw when things became inconvenient.

And even now, as I suffer, I am still choosing.

Choosing not to hate.
Choosing not to retaliate.
Choosing not to let rejection turn me cruel.

If my children see only one chapter, that is their limitation.

But I will not reduce myself to it.

My life is not one action.

It is the sum of every time I loved when it hurt.

And I am still choosing love.

Even now.

Motherhood Pain That Has No Name

 

There is a kind of pain that comes with motherhood that no one prepares you for.

It is the pain of still being a mother --
but no longer being included in your children’s lives.

I did not stop loving.
I did not walk away.
I did not disappear.

Yet somehow, I am the one left outside.

This pain is quiet.
It does not scream.
It settles into the chest and stays there.

It shows up in ordinary moments --
when I want to share something small,
when I imagine how their days are going,
when I realize no one thought to ask how mine is.

Motherhood pain is not always loud conflict.
Sometimes it is the slow ache of being forgotten.

People often say, “They’ll come back.”
But they do not see what it costs to wait while still loving.
They do not understand how heavy it is to carry hope that keeps getting postponed.

I am still a mother every day.
I still worry.
I still pray.
I still remember the sound of their laughter when they were younger and needed me without hesitation.

This pain does not mean I failed.
It means I loved deeply and continue to do so -- even without reassurance.

Today, I allow myself to name this motherhood pain.
Not to accuse.
Not to explain.
But to acknowledge that loving without access is its own kind of suffering.

And I am learning to live with that truth -- gently, one day at a time.

A Letter To God From A Tired Heart

Dear God,

I am coming to You because I have nowhere else to put this pain.

I am placing all of it at Your feet --
every heartbreak,
every unanswered question,
every tear I wipe away when no one is looking.

You see what I carry.

You see the physical pain in my body that will not leave.
The exhaustion in my bones.
The heaviness in my chest that feels like it is pressing inward from all sides.

You see the emotional wounds that reopen daily --
the rejection,
the silence,
the feeling of being erased from the lives I once centered my own around.

And You see the psychological weight --
the doubt,
the second-guessing,
the torment of asking myself what I did wrong.

God, I do not know what else to say to You.

I talk to You every day.
I tell You everything.
And sometimes it feels like You are silent.

Please do not turn Your face from me.

If I have sinned, show me gently.
If I have erred, correct me with mercy.
But do not leave me alone in this valley of confusion.

I need the miracle of healing.

Heal my body -- where pain has made its home.
Heal my heart -- where rejection has settled.
Heal my mind -- where thoughts spiral and accuse me.

I cannot keep bleeding like this.

Father, You know I did not abandon or abuse my children.
You know my intentions.
You know the years I stayed,
the sacrifices I made,
the nights I prayed over them.

If I was wrong, reveal it to me with clarity.
But if I am being punished by misunderstanding,
then defend me in ways I cannot defend myself.

Touch my children’s hearts.

Not to make them feel guilty.
Not to force them.
But to let them see the truth.

Let them understand that what they are doing to me
cuts deeper than any worldly punishment.

Let them see that I still love them.
Let them remember who I have always been to them.

And if reconciliation is not immediate,
then give me the strength to survive the waiting.

God, I am tired of pretending I am strong.

I am not strong right now.

My heart feels like it is screaming inside my chest.
Some days I feel stabbed by memories.
Other days by silence.

Please do not let this pain destroy what is left of me.

Sit with me in this.
Hold me when I feel abandoned.
Speak to me when Your silence feels unbearable.

I do not want to lose my faith.
I do not want bitterness to replace tenderness.
I do not want despair to define me.

I want healing.
I want peace.
I want restoration -- in whatever form You know is right.

Until then, carry what I cannot carry anymore.

I am placing it all at Your feet.

And I am staying here -- not because I understand,
but because I have nowhere else to go.

Amen.

Valentine’s Day For A Mother Who Is Not Chosen

Today is Valentine’s Day.

Everywhere I look, I see flowers, hearts, celebrations of love.

And I sit here asking myself a question that feels too heavy to carry --

What makes a mother unworthy of her children’s love?

Valentine’s Day is not only for lovers.
It is for anyone who longs to be chosen.

And today, I feel unchosen.

I did not abandon my children.
I did not disappear from their lives.
I did not stop loving them.

All I did was leave a marriage that was breaking me -- after waiting until they were grown enough to understand.

Or so I thought.

Now I question everything.

Was I selfish?
Was I wrong to protect my own peace?
Did choosing survival make me the villain?

Sometimes I look at other mothers who walked away from their children completely -- who started new lives without looking back.

And I ask myself --

Am I worse than them?
Is staying present but separating from their father somehow more unforgivable?

Because the message I feel today is this --

I am the bad one.
The one who deserves distance.
The one who must accept silence.
The one who should understand why she is no longer embraced.

And that thought pierces deeper than anything else.

Every day feels like being stabbed in the same place.
The wound never closes because the rejection continues.

Valentine’s Day magnifies it.

It reminds me that love is celebrated -- but not all love is returned.

I still wake up loving them.
I still carry their names in my prayers.
I still feel that reflex in my chest when something reminds me of them.

Nothing in me has withdrawn.

And yet I am treated as if I forfeited my right to be close.

The hardest part is not the distance.
It is the narrative.

The subtle implication that I broke something sacred -- that I fractured the family -- that my leaving the marriage is the original sin.

But here is the truth I struggle to hold onto --

A woman choosing to leave a painful marriage does not equal a mother abandoning her children.

Those are not the same thing.

I did not leave them.

I left a situation that was no longer healthy.

And yet today, on Valentine’s Day,
I sit with the unbearable feeling that love has been reassigned.

That the other parent is the safe one.
The good one.
The chosen one.

And I am the cautionary tale.

This hurts in ways I cannot explain without sounding bitter.

But I am not bitter.

I am brokenhearted.

Valentine’s Day for me is not roses.

It is longing.

It is writing because if I do not let these words out, the grief will suffocate me.

It is loving children who may not be thinking of me today.

It is hoping that one day they will see that my separation was not betrayal -- it was survival.

If I am guilty of anything, it is loving them beyond reason.

And even now -- especially now -- I still do.

Rejected By The Ones I Carried

There is no handbook for this.

No one prepares a mother for the day she realizes
she is being erased from the lives she built with her own body.

Rejection from your children is not like romantic rejection.
It is not like losing friends.
It is not even like divorce.

It is deeper.

It is the unbearable awareness that the very hearts you once held against your chest have learned how to live without turning toward you.

I carried them.
I protected them.
I chose them -- over sleep, over comfort, over myself.

And now I stand at the edge of their lives
like a distant relative.

The silence is what breaks me.

Not one dramatic confrontation.
Not one explosive fight.

Just the slow removal of access.
The absence of warmth.
The careful distancing that says --
“You are no longer central.”

Every milestone I am not told about feels like a small funeral.
Every moment they celebrate without me feels like proof
that I have been repositioned in their story.

And I ask myself questions I never thought I would have to ask --

How does a mother become optional?
How does love that never left become unwanted?
How do you survive knowing you are being tolerated instead of embraced?

This is not pride speaking.
This is heartbreak.

Because when rejection comes from strangers,
you can walk away.

When it comes from your children,
you cannot amputate your own heart.

The worst part is this --

I still love them with the same intensity.
The same reflex.
The same protective instinct.

My love did not shrink to match their distance.

That is what makes it ache.

There are nights when I sit in the quiet
and feel the full weight of being unwanted by the very people
who once reached for me instinctively.

And yet --

Even in this devastation,
I refuse to call myself a failure.

A mother being rejected does not mean she stopped loving.
It does not mean she was abusive.
It does not mean she was unworthy.

Sometimes it simply means life fractured something sacred
and the pieces do not fit the way they once did.

The pain is real.
The rejection is real.
The grief is ongoing.

But I am still here.

Still loving.
Still standing.
Still refusing to let someone else’s distance define my value.

And if my heart must break quietly,
it will still break with dignity.

I Am Not Your Villain

There are moments in life when silence feels like surrender.

And there are moments when silence becomes self-erasure.

This is not the first kind.

I have been called abusive.

My mother has been called an enabler of that abuse.

And I need to say something plainly.

I am not an abusive mother.

Abuse is not the same as honesty.
Abuse is not the same as leaving a painful marriage.
Abuse is not the same as speaking truth to an adult daughter about lived experience.

I did not terrorize my children.
I did not manipulate their reality.
I did not isolate them from their father.
I did not use fear or guilt to control them.

I raised them in conversation.
I raised them in presence.
I raised them in love.

If sharing my story when my daughter was already a young adult is now called “trauma dumping,” then words have been stretched beyond their meaning.

I never asked her to carry me.
I never asked her to fix me.
I never asked her to choose sides.

If any part of what I shared felt heavy, I would be willing to hear that. I would be willing to own unintended impact. That is what emotionally responsible adults do.

But impact is not the same as intent.
And heaviness is not the same as abuse.

There is also a difference between supporting someone you love and enabling harm. My mother stood by her daughter. That is not a crime. That is not complicity in cruelty.

It is loyalty.

I left a marriage that hurt me.

That decision does not make me a villain.

It does not erase the years I stayed.
It does not erase the nights I carried my children through sickness and fear.
It does not erase the foundation I helped build in their lives.

Being called “dead” does not make me dead.

Being called “abusive” does not make me abusive.

Labels do not rewrite history.

Yes, I am hurting.

Yes, I am grieving.

But I will not collapse into a false identity because it is easier for others to hold.

I am not perfect.

But I am not cruel.

I am not violent.

I am not the monster in this story.

I am a mother whose life is being interpreted through a different lens right now.

And interpretation is not the same thing as truth.

The Weight of Being Rewritten

There is a kind of sadness that does not shout.
It does not rage.
It does not accuse.
It does not demand.

It simply sits.

Heavy.
Persistent.
Unmovable.

That is where I am.

My son said I have been dead to him for seven years -- since the day I left his father.

Dead.

I raised him with my own hands. I taught him before school ever did. I stayed through years that broke me because I believed staying meant stability. I carried the quiet, unseen labor of motherhood -- the kind that shapes human beings long before the world sees their achievements.

And now I am spoken of as if I vanished the day I chose to survive.

He told my mother that she is an enabler of my abusive behavior.

Abusive.

I need to say this clearly -- I am not an abusive mother.

I did not manipulate my children.
I did not isolate them.
I did not control them through fear.
I did not weaponize my pain.

I waited until my daughter was a young adult before I opened up about the hurt in my marriage. We spoke as women speak -- about life, about disappointment, about truth. I never asked her to fix me. I never asked her to choose sides. I never asked her to carry what was not hers.

If anything I shared ever felt heavy to her, I would grieve that deeply. But heaviness is not the same as abuse. Honesty is not the same as harm.

And my mother supporting her daughter is not the same as enabling cruelty.

Still -- the sadness remains.

Sad that therapy language now defines our family.
Sad that words like abuse and enabler hover over my name.
Sad that my explanations are labeled harm.
Sad that my son describes his father as a very good father while I am rewritten as the source of fracture.

I left a marriage that hurt me. I did not leave my children.

But in their story, those two things have merged.

Time has not healed this sadness. It has layered it.

Each morning I wake and feel the absence before I even open my eyes. Each night I carry unanswered questions to sleep. Writing is the only place the weight rests for a moment. It is the only space where I am allowed to exist without interruption.

I do not believe my children are evil.
I do not believe I am blameless either.

I believe we are all standing in different corners of the same fractured story.

Maybe my pain felt heavier to them than I realized.
Maybe therapy has given language to feelings they never had before.
Maybe distance has hardened interpretations.

But none of that makes me an abuser.

I am a mother who loved honestly.
I am a mother who left harm.
I am a mother who stayed until she could not stay anymore.

The sadness of being called dead.
The sadness of not being heard.
The sadness of loving children who are alive but unreachable.

There are no rituals for this kind of grief.

So I pray.
I write.
I sit with the heaviness.

I am still a mother.

Even if I am misunderstood.
Even if I am misnamed.
Even if I am silent in their lives for now.

Sadness does not make me guilty.

It makes me human.

Casa Arcoiris De Anna -- Learning To See With Softer Eyes

This week, I received another full batch of photos.

To be honest -- my first reaction was not joy.

There were boards on the floor. Drawers half-open. Shelves unfinished. Angles that did not quite capture what I wanted. Lighting that did not flatter the rooms the way I had imagined.

For months, I have asked for clearer shots. Better framing. More intention. I wanted photos I could proudly post on my blog. On Facebook. Photos that told the story the way I feel it in my heart.

And for a moment -- I felt that familiar frustration again.

But then I paused.

The Powder Sky Room is no longer just paint and promise. The built-ins are there. The soft ceiling curve is real. Light enters through the window and touches the shelves gently. It is not staged -- but it is becoming.

The Blush Rose Room feels tender. The cabinetry stands steady against the pink walls. It looks quieter now. More settled.

The Lemon Meringue Room glows with warmth. Even unfinished, the yellow feels hopeful. The playful wall details are no longer sketches -- they are real and smiling back at me.

The Mint Meadow Room feels fresh and alive. The green walls hold the space gently. The pumpkin accents bring character. It is no longer just a vision I carried -- it exists.

The Lavender Haze Powder Room surprised me the most. Seeing the fixtures in place. Seeing the window framed. Seeing paint instead of bare walls. It felt like a small victory.

Are the photos perfect? No.

Are they the meaningful, carefully composed shots I have been asking for? Not quite.

But they show progress.
They show hands at work.
They show movement forward.

And I had to remind myself --

This young architect is only a couple of years older than my own daughter. Maybe she is still learning how to see the way I see. Maybe she is doing her best in ways I cannot fully measure from a distance.

Casa Arcoiris is still becoming.

So am I.

Maybe part of building a home is also building patience.
Maybe part of creating something beautiful is learning to extend grace.
Maybe part of growth is choosing to see what is working -- even when it is not perfect.

This house is rising.
Slowly.
Imperfectly.
Honestly.

And perhaps that is how forgiveness begins --

Not in grand gestures.
But in softer eyes.
In choosing understanding over anger.
In choosing progress over perfection.

Casa Arcoiris is teaching me that dreams do not have to be flawless to be real.

They just have to keep moving.

And maybe, in learning to build this house, I am also learning how to build a softer heart. Perhaps this home is not just teaching me about design -- but about grace, forgiveness, and growing beyond my own expectations. Casa Arcoiris may not be perfect yet -- but neither am I. And we are both becoming, one patient layer at a time.