if sacrifice had a face

people say grief comes in waves. mine feels more like a tide that never fully goes out. it just shifts, rearranges the shoreline, leaves evidence everywhere.

my mom was the definition of come from nothing and no one. no safety net. no silver spoon. no gentle landing. just a girl who decided the world wasn’t going to tell her who she was allowed to be. she left school early. packed up her stubborn heart and went to new york at sixteen because staying felt smaller than leaving. she sang in a political punk band. she believed in people. she believed in justice. she believed in feeding strangers even when she barely had enough for us. she was for the people before that was a slogan you could print on a tote bag.

she raised us on grit and imagination. single mom magic. the kind where you don’t realize you’re broke because everything still feels enchanted. she could turn a random tuesday into a memory. she could take something ugly and make it beautiful just by deciding it would be.

kids used to tell me they couldn’t come over because their parents were scared of her tattoos. i remember sitting there like… of all the things to fear, you picked the art on her skin? it’s funny now. tragic, but funny. because my mother was the softest person i’ve ever known. soft in a way that wasn’t weak, just deliberate. she chose tenderness in a world that kept trying to harden her. she could’ve been bitter. she had every reason. instead she stayed kind.

i once read a line that said if sacrifice had a face, it would look like my mother. and i felt that in my bones. safety was her voice in the next room. her laugh. her ability to make you feel like you weren’t crazy for feeling things deeply. she made space for people. especially the ones who didn’t fit.

two things i’ve learned since she’s been gone:

i could’ve spent more time with her when i was a teenager.

and no amount of time would’ve ever been enough.

those truths sit next to each other like sisters who don’t talk but still share the same DNA.

the most common thing people say to me is some version of “i don’t know what i’d do without my mom” and truthfully, yeah, me neither. i’m still figuring that out. there’s no clean answer.

the cruel twist is that the more i grow into myself, the more i see her in me. in the way i care too much. in the way i want to protect people. in the way i romanticize tiny beautiful things because life is short and i watched it prove that. the more similar i become to her, the more i wish she was here.

she came from nothing and built everything with her bare hands and a soft heart. and now i’m here, trying to do the same.