This is written 11, 26, 18.
And the subject is on mothering love. Hello, my friend, my sister, my example.
I'm sitting on a balcony on Cayman Island and right at this moment, writing an essay about
the word mother. What that word really means. How it's less to me, a fixed identity,
we can be or not be and more an energy we can offer or not offer. The essay is about how some of us who can check the box mother never really learn how to offer mothering love and how others
of us who don't check the box harness it and offer it widely and wildly. The essay is about how
much better off the world would be if we gathered up mothering love and used it like a floodlight instead of a pointed laser aimed only at the few we've been assigned. As I'm writing this essay on the balcony, my sister just sent me a text that says, gee, Oprah's mother died. She was 83.
I wanted you to know. I just got that text a minute ago.
I would never presume to guess what your relationship was like,
how complex it was and is to be your mother's daughter. What your feelings are this week,
what your feelings have been or will be. I just wanted to say
that you are my example of how to gather up mothering love
and use it as a floodlight to illuminate and warm the world. You are my and the world's best example
of grace which means that we can somehow give what we've never even received. I don't know much but from everything you've bravely say and kindly don't say. I've gathered that you didn't get
the mothering love you deserved and needed as a little girl and a grown girl. To me,
that is what makes you a miracle. It is a miracle that somehow you took the broken pieces that
she put in your hands, all of them and you spun them into gold and opened your hands wide
and offered that gold back to the world, which is not just a gift to the world.
It is a gift directly back to your mother because you worked with what she gave you
ensured that her legacy through you is gold. With your help, your mother's legacy is gold.
What a gift. If there is a heaven, she can see that now. She can see that her miraculous daughter
somehow somehow turned her offerings to gold. God bet she's amazed and grateful. Well done
good, faithful, miraculous badass servant in your corner forever.