My mom left when I was seven. One night she was braiding my hair and humming lullabies. The next morning, she was gone. Dad told me she had abandoned us and never cared.<\/p>\n
I believed him.<\/p>\n
When she tried to reach out over the years, I ignored her. I tore up birthday cards. Declined calls. Blocked messages. When I turned twenty-one, she begged to see me, saying she was sick and running out of time.<\/p>\n
I told her, \u201cYou\u2019re already dead to me,\u201d and hung up.<\/p>\n
Five months later, a young man came into the caf\u00e9 where I worked. He had my eyes. My smile. He said my name softly.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m your brother. Our mom passed away two days ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
He handed me a worn canvas bag with my name written in her handwriting. Inside were hundreds of photos of me as a baby. Locks of my hair. My first tooth. Dozens of handwritten letters\u2014one for every birthday, every holiday, every year she missed.<\/p>\n
She never stopped loving me.<\/p>\n
In her longest letter, she explained why she left and how she\u2019d tried to come back. How my dad kept her away.<\/p>\n
I sat on the floor sobbing, surrounded by proof of a love I never allowed myself to believe in.<\/p>\n
I wish I\u2019d listened. I wish I\u2019d given her one chance to speak.<\/p>\n
Sometimes the deepest regrets come from the words we never let ourselves hear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My mom left when I was seven. One night she was braiding my hair and humming lullabies. The next morning, she was gone. Dad told me she had abandoned us and never cared. I believed him. When she tried to reach out over the years, I ignored her. I tore up birthday cards. Declined calls. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3158,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3157"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3159,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3157\/revisions\/3159"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}