A spoken poem about watching the lunar eclipse and the nostalgia it stirs. The speaker wrestles with envy of her daughters' unburdened lives, the masks she wore to be enough, and what motherhood taught her about love. She tells other women their exhaustion and longing are not theirs alone.
Chapters
So this is a poem for the lunar eclipse on August 27th in Southern California, 2026. Okay, here goes. I'm not a poet but feel compelled to write this down. I have recently been hit with waves of nostalgia, waves of wishing I was younger and could rewrite my story. These waves make no sense. I would not be who I am now if I had not lived this life of mine. Why do I feel so drawn to how things could have been? I have never been one to loiter in the past. Too much in the future is more my style. But lately, my heart has been pulling me back there. It started with my daughters. Seeing them so happy and free after years of sadness. The freshness of their smiles, the innocence of their hearts. Finally happy. It is not that I don't feel happy. I do. But I have a strange sense of jealousy. Jealous of the blank canvas they get to write on. Jealous of their innocence and open hearts. Jealous of first loves. Oh, how I would love to feel that way again. Life has made me very wise. This jealousy does not make sense. I am who I am today because of the struggles and hardships. Theoretically, I know I would not like to have to start again and repeat that entire process. Yet my desire to live for a moment in the innocence of youth is strong. I had no idea how beautiful and amazing I was back then, and I want to go and shake my younger self, yell at her until she listened. She spent so many years Decades, in fact, feeling like there was something wrong with her, like she was never enough. So she performed and twisted herself into whomever she thought would be enough. The masks, oh, so many masks. She was an expert chameleon and could switch personalities in a second. Adapting to who she thought her audience wanted her to be. I want to shake that girl so hard. Imagine living a life where you don't have to perform to be deserving of love. Where would I have gone? What would I have done? I would never trade this life, but yet I mourn for the life I haven't lived. The choices I never made because fear was controlling me. Fear that was not real. Fear that I had applied to myself because I did not know any better. Becoming a mother was the best thing that ever happened to me. For the first time in my life, I felt unconditional love. Not towards me, but from me. That overwhelming feeling that takes over your whole body. To love something so much it made my heart ache. Then finally understanding that this type of love was what I had been missing. Not from external sources, from myself. To finally understand that if my children deserved this level of gut-wrenching love, then I did as well. This realization did not happen overnight. It probably did not even happen completely until earlier this year. I am 46 years old. Can a teenager understand this? Maybe we can only truly see it after time has passed. Our innocence and naivety might block our ability to truly see ourselves, for we have not walked through fire and over broken glass. We have not truly been tested and come out the other side. Wisdom is earned from a thousand battles. Some small, and some so huge they break you into pieces. Pieces you don't know if you can put back together. But you do. Slowly. Piece by piece. But you can never return to the innocence. Is this what I am craving? Complete oblivion to the battle scars? That open-hearted feeling, the butterflies, of not knowing the heartache and despair that was to come. I am the mother, but I am still young at heart. Yet the overwhelming burden of responsibility keeps me tethered to reality. Saturn's rings, my sister calls it, spinning them constantly. Is exhausting, but I don't know how to put them down, so I keep them spinning. No wonder I long for the innocence, respite from the heaviness I carry. Is this why people have a midlife crisis? They realize they are too far gone in the direction of burdens and responsibilities and desperately wish to return to times that felt simple and free. When your life was full of possibilities, so many paths you could take. What I've learned is that no path is easy. That's the point. Knowing this means I can never have this innocence back. I am still naive and probably always will be. That part of my heart I am thankful for. My broken parts have been pieced back together with trust and resilience. A deep knowing that I can survive pretty much anything. I have not been hardened so much that I am bitter. I still trust the good in people. I still give with an open heart, even though it often gets taken advantage of. I won't stop being that person. It is who I am. What if I just lay down my rings for one day? Would my world collapse? Probably not. A week though would be getting into dangerous territory. So what is the point if I just have to pick them up again tomorrow? Maybe there is a coat check that can mind them for a few hours. Wouldn't that be nice? Why am I writing this? I suppose I needed to process this strange jealous feeling. I guess it's actually an obituary. To my maiden self. To the innocence of not knowing. To the many paths and many lives that never happened. To the what-ifs. It feels strange to write, as I am happy where I am right now. I have fought hard to get here. I have the battle scars to prove it. So I guess this is a letter to all the women who feel this way, to know you're not alone, to know I feel this too. So let's get out some blank paper and write the rest of our story. The battles won't stop, but now you know that you have the resilience to survive them. So what are we going to write? What are we going to choose? Because girl, it's time. Love you. And we're gonna cry. Oh, it is time. It is time.
