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The Greatest Love of My Life
This was no ordinary love
It wasn’t romantic, though I sometimes wished it were. Maybe then it would have been easier—easier to walk away, easier to breathe without the weight of all that pain.
But whoever said real love is easy?
Like most true love, ours was layered. Messy. Gut-wrenchingly painful.
Because the person who caused me the greatest pain, the deepest grief, the most aching sorrow… was also the person who gave me life.
My mother.
We’ve had a tumultuous relationship for as long as I can remember — a push-pull dynamic of needing and resenting. Of loving and wounding. Sometimes reaching out only to be met with silence or distance.
She wasn’t always the mother I longed for. But she was the mother I had. And I now believe she was the mother I needed.
I know she tried her best. I also know she had a hard life — both as a child and as a woman. Abandoned by her own mother as a baby, she grew up carrying a wound too deep for words. Later, she divorced in India at a time when it was unthinkable, with no support and few choices. She often said she felt utterly alone.
And as the saying goes: hurt people hurt people. Thich Nhat Hanh had reminded us, “When another person makes…
