I wish she had a village

So I created one.

When I was pregnant I couldn’t possibly have imagined what was waiting for me on the other side of motherhood.

I was a Londoner, singing in jam sessions with friends, chasing fleeting highs that felt like freedom. By day, I poured myself into a job that took more than it gave, leaving me hollow and restless. I kept giving—time, energy, pieces of myself—to everyone and everything, hoping it would add up to something. Meaning, purpose, peace.

But that “something” wasn’t in the city streets, or the music, or the grind. It was inside me, waiting, quiet and patient—while I looked everywhere but in to find it.

However, life has its ways to crack you open, to spill out the truth, to reveal the real purpose of things, to give you the answers to questions you didn’t even know you were asking. And it doesn’t always happen gently.

Loneliness. It finds you. No matter how fast you run or how well you hide. It catches up. You’ll feel it, because it’s necessary. Because it’s useful. But the whole point of a hidden blessing is to conceal its true mission, isn’t it?

My loneliness? It started so early, I almost mistook it for who I was. Just like my depression.

5 years old. When I lost you. That’s when loneliness stopped being a feeling and became a place. Everywhere. L’omniprésence de ton absence became too heavy to bear.

It wasn’t unfamiliar, though—I already knew the house without you. You were always gone on the mainland for chemo, and Mum would go with you.

But even then, I still had hope. I didn’t understand the concept of death. Not really. I thought absence was something temporary, something you could come back from.

So when I felt it—like a dagger in my chest—your passing, I knew this time you wouldn’t come back, but how could I accept it ?

You were my person, my safe place, the one who made me feel seen. When you were there, I wasn’t lonely.

You kept telling me how special I was and it resonated, because, weirdly enough, I always knew I was.

To everyone else, it was pretty annoying, this brain of mine. Only convenient in the moments they could brag about it. But not when I asked questions, not when I was informative and never when I didn’t understand something they thought I should already know.

So I was asked to know how to grieve conveniently. And I did my best. But I couldn’t see the point without you.

So I prayed, I prayed the sky would take her instead of you. And I told her I did.

When I saw the sadness in her eyes, it shifted. I decided I would stop asking for her to leave and start asking the sky to bring me to you instead.

I started thinking about suicide age 5.  How am I still alive ?

It’s probably thanks to her.

Mummy, you were so hard, so reactive. Your survival mode became mine.

And you never questioned it—because you couldn’t. You would’ve died, literally, if you did. You had me to care for, you had money to make, you had to stay angry.

Because anger was safer. Anger kept you moving. You were scared that if you let go of it, the sadness would come, and it would eat you whole.

I’m crying, writing this, because I couldn’t understand you for so long, and now I can, and you’re gone. How ironic life is?

Like the only time you allowed yourself to fall in love again, 13 years after your husband died, you were so incredibly happy. I remember seeing it. Feeling it. It was like catching another glimpse of what life could’ve been without all the loss.

But it wasn’t meant to be.

It felt like a curse, didn’t it? When the doctor said the same words you’d heard all those years before. Bones and lungs. Cancer. Again.

I’ll never forget how you fell to my feet, apologising to me for the first time in your life—for making me see cancer and death again. But it was never your fault.

Maman, you never had a village.

You had people who depended on you, people who came to you for advice, for care—but you hated talking about yourself.

You said helping others made you feel better. Like it gave you a sense of purpose, maybe even a sense of superiority. Because as long as you looked like you didn’t need anyone, you could convince yourself it was true.

I wish you had one thought, a support system. I wish you had people seeing through your act—people who could look past the strength you wore like an armor and see the woman underneath. Someone to tell you it was okay to need, to fall apart, to be held.

But instead, you surrounded yourself with people so wounded that real conversation was impossible.

All the talk was about their pain, and they loved you because they needed you.

All the while, you were still reactive, unfair and violent—while telling your parent friends, your mentees, to do the exact opposite. Right in front of my face.

Yes, I wish you had a village. A village to keep you accountable. To question you. To see you. To guide you—slowly—toward a calm nervous system. To take the steps with you, softly, gently, one by one.

This is where my path stop following yours, Mummy. We were so fusional that I had to repeat your mistakes just to feel closer to you when I couldn’t understand you. I had to stumble my way into raising a child alone, just like you. Of course this was the road the Universe chose for me. To bring me here, to this exact moment, where I say goodbye to your traumas, and to those carried by the women before you.

Because now, I choose. I choose to create my own path—one of healing, one of love. A path that leads to an infinite and powerful village.

To you, my dearest cycle-breakers,

I will make my own mistakes, and I will share them all here. I am creating tools for us to raise our consciousness together—while staying true to who we are at our core. Because the answers aren’t in the mind. They’re in the heart.

And if you’re like me—if you were once a victim of life, if you know loss and violence like the back of your hand—and now you have a child to raise while changing the destiny of generations to come, then you know.

You know that reflexes remain. That knowing isn’t enough. We have to act. Let’s do it together.

You’re my village now. And Merci Mummy is yours.

This is just the beginning.