The Girl I Was & The home I’m Building

My childhood didn’t look like the ones you see in family photo albums.

There wasn’t a mom and dad standing on either side of me at school events. There weren’t quiet dinners around a table where everyone showed up at the same time, every night. My story was built in fragments—pieces of love gathered from different places, held together by the people who refused to let me fall through the cracks.

My dad was taken from my life early. Not slowly. Not gently. One day he was there, and then he wasn’t. His absence wasn’t something I grew into—it was something I learned to live with from the very beginning. My memories of him didn’t come from bedtime stories or car rides home from school. They came from phone calls, letters, and the way my heart learned to recognize his voice before I could fully understand why it had to travel so far to reach me.

My mom was there in body, but often fighting battles I couldn’t see or name as a child. I learned early that love doesn’t always look the same in every season. Some days, it looked like distance. Some days, it looked like trying, even when the weight of her own world felt heavy. I grew up becoming sensitive to quiet shifts in energy, learning when to speak and when to sit back, when to reach out and when to give space. As an adult, I see her differently now—not through the eyes of a child who needed more, but through the eyes of a woman who understands how hard it is to carry your own pain while still showing up for someone else.

I didn’t blame her. Not then. Not now. I see her struggles more clearly as an adult. I see how hard it is to carry your own pain while trying to raise a child. But as a little girl, all I understood was that I needed someone to lean on.

And that’s when the women in my dad’s family became my foundation.

My grandmother—my dad’s mom—became my constant. She was the one who showed up in ways that didn’t need explaining. The kind of love that came in warm meals, steady routines, and the quiet comfort of knowing someone would always be there when I walked through the door. Her house felt like safety. Her voice felt like something solid in a world that kept shifting under my feet.

My aunt—my dad’s sister—became my lightness. She made sure my world didn’t become only about what was missing. With her, there was room to laugh, to be silly, to forget for a moment that life could be complicated. She pulled me into small joys and ordinary adventures that reminded me I was still allowed to just be a kid. When everything else felt serious, she created pockets of normalcy—spaces where I didn’t have to be strong, brave, or understanding. I just had to be me.

Growing up, I always felt like I was standing in two worlds at once.

In one world, I was just a kid trying to be normal—laughing with friends, going to school, dreaming about the future, pretending that my family story didn’t make me feel different.

In the other, I was carrying things most kids my age didn’t have to carry. A father behind walls. A mother fighting her own storms. A family story that didn’t fit neatly into conversation.

I learned early how to answer questions without really answering them.

“Where’s your dad?”

“He’s not around.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

It wasn’t always okay. But it was easier to say it was.

There were nights I lay in bed and imagined what it would feel like to be tucked in by both parents. To hear footsteps in the hallway and not wonder who they belonged to. To feel like I belonged somewhere without having to piece it together from different people. I used to picture a version of my future that felt steady, whole, and safe—without really knowing if something like that was possible for someone who grew up the way I did.

And then I became a mother.

Motherhood didn’t just change my life—it changed my understanding of my past.

I look at my son and see all the little things I used to wish for. The way he reaches for my hand without thinking. The way he looks for my face in a crowded room. The way he expects me to be there, because to him, my presence is a given, not a question.

And I realize how much that means.

Every bedtime story I read him feels like a promise I’m keeping to my younger self. Every school event I show up for feels like healing something in me that once sat in the audience scanning the room, hoping someone would arrive. Every hug I give him when he’s upset feels like me reaching back through time and holding the little girl I used to be.

I am intentional in ways I didn’t even know how to be before I became a parent.

I create routines because I grew up in unpredictability.

I speak gently because I learned how loud silence can be.

I show up consistently because I know what it feels like when people don’t.

I want my son to grow up knowing what it feels like to feel secure in love—not to wonder where it went or if it will disappear. I want his memories to be built in living rooms, at kitchen tables, in crowded school hallways where he can spot me waving from across the room. I want him to carry laughter instead of explanations, comfort instead of questions.

At the same time, I carry my family with me into the mother I am becoming.

I carry my grandmother’s steadiness in the way I hold my son when he’s tired.

I carry my aunt’s playfulness in the way I remind him that it’s okay to just be a kid.

I carry my mom’s brokenness in the way I choose to build something whole for him.

And I carry my dad’s hope in the way I believe, fiercely, in better days—even when things feel heavy.

My childhood taught me what absence feels like.

Motherhood is teaching me what presence can heal.

My story wasn’t built on a traditional foundation. It was built on borrowed strength, shared love, and women who stepped in when life stepped out. It was built on a father who loved me from a distance and a mother who fought her own battles while trying to keep going.

Now, I am building something new.

I am building a home where love is loud, where showing up is normal, where questions don’t have to be whispered and feelings don’t have to be hidden. I am building a life for my son that I once only imagined in the quiet of my childhood bedroom.

This is the girl I was.

This is the woman I became.

And this is the mother I am choosing to be—every single day.

And this is why I speak now instead of staying quiet.

Because I grew up learning what silence costs. I learned what it feels like when a system takes a father, when a family is left to build a life around an absence instead of a presence. My voice, my writing, and this platform are my way of standing in the space where my dad couldn’t. It’s my way of teaching my son that when something is wrong, you don’t look away—you tell the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable.

I am raising him in a world where love shows up, and justice is something we fight for, not just hope for. And until the day my father can sit at a real kitchen table with us, I will keep telling our story—because our lives are more than a case, more than a sentence, more than a silence.