A story of SHE I tried to forget —
yet somehow, SHE still taught me how to live.

Describe a family member.

There was a woman I never knew.
A ghost who lingered in the air around my name — once there, then gone, before I was old enough to remember her face.
She lived somewhere between stories and silence — half myth, half warning.

Whispers and shadows

People whispered her name in fragments.
“She was crazy,” they said.
“She lost it.”
“Anxiety. Pills. Therapy.”
“Alcohol.”
And then a hush.
As if her name itself could wake the dead.

I didn’t know her.
I never looked her in the eyes.
Never heard her laugh.
Her voice existed only in echoes —
in the space between sentences.

Fragments of a name

She was a stranger.
And I hated her.
Deeply.
With all the fire my heart could hold
for someone who never stayed.

Then she died.
And nothing happened.
No storm.
No relief.
No tears.
Just a quiet click —
as if the world turned a page I hadn’t finished reading.

Only later did I realise:
She had been real.
A real person.
A woman with trembling hands and too many shadows.

And still, I hated her.
For leaving.
For not showing up.
For crossing over and leaving me to carry both our pain.

Mirrors and echoes

Years later, I became someone different.
And hate turned to something else —
a hollow ache that rang inside my bones.

I saw her then —
in mirrors, in memories,
in the moments I wanted to disappear.
I felt her loneliness curl inside my own.
I began to understand the weight she must have carried.
The noise inside her head.
The silence no one stayed long enough to listen to.

Learning forgiveness

Slowly, painfully,
I began to forgive.
Not because she asked —
she never did.
Not because she deserved it —
but because I did.

Because I couldn’t keep bleeding from a wound that started in someone else’s hands.

I learned she couldn’t do it better.
She wasn’t built for the light she tried to hold.
She was wrapped too tightly in her own storm,
without help, without anchor.

It wasn’t her fault.
It wasn’t mine either.

The gift she could give

And one day,
between breaths,
I realised —
she gave me the one thing she could.
Life. My life.

A trembling, imperfect, miraculous life.

Through her, I came here —
to break the cycle,
to breathe differently,
to rise.

She — the stranger, the shadow, the absence —

became my greatest teacher.
Not through her presence,
but through her fall.

She showed me what healing means
when love is born from the ruins.
And so,
with a heart both broken and blooming,
I whisper it now —
as if she could still hear me across time:

Thank you, Mum.
I finally see you.

If you’ve ever carried anger, loss, or longing for someone you never fully knew,
take a moment now to forgive — not for them, but for yourself.
And watch how your heart begins to bloom.

Love, Stefanie Anna