IN THE ECHO OF A MOTHER’S CRY

I can still hear the screams:
a voice torn raw, unfiltered by time,
raging through the corridors of my heart—
the anguish of a mother undone,
her soul unraveling in the dark,
her body anchored in love,
but her spirit adrift in despair.

I see it in her eyes—the devastation:
eyes once luminous with hope,
now blurred behind cataracts of grief and unbelief,
windows to a storm-riddled sea,
where nothing looks familiar and everything is lost.
In those eyes I recognize the tremor of trust shattered,
the tremor of a future unseen,
the tremor of a life dismantled
by the rupture of what should have been.

And that voice—oh that voice—
a desperate cry rising from the deep:
“If I cannot see my child grow up, then I don’t want another day on this earth.”
Her wail reverberates through me,
an echo of a love so full it overtook the boundaries of self.
Her fear laid bare: the fear that what she birthed
could slip away, could vanish into the fog
of illness, memory, time, identity.

That mother was my own daughter.
My daughter—the one I carried,
nurtured, guided along the paths of innocence and wonder.
I was the one who’d promised: “I will hold you, protect you,
walk with you, raise you.”
Yet here we are—how is it that my role
has shifted from giver of comfort
to witness of her suffering?

I am the mother of a woman who no longer walks the familiar route
through our shared home of memories.
She remains there in body—yes—but the vibrant spirit
I knew in her early years
resides somewhere else: in Pod 3, in a place of halted becoming,
while the physical vessel moves among us.
I feel her absence
in the very presence of her.
I feel the loss
in the echoes of what we both were.

Life as she has known it—
the unfolding of dreams, the steady march of years,
the quiet comfort of routines and love—
is gone. Or at least, has been stripped of its simple certainties.
The ground beneath our feet shifts;
we stand on strange soil.
All the things we counted as safe,
the predictable tides of the children‑growing‑up,
the seasons of laughter and milestones,
the comfort of ‘tomorrow’,
fall away like dead leaves in autumn wind.

And I—her mother—
I sit with open arms, open ears, open heart.
Not knowing the map of this terrain.
Not certain where the path leads or how long our feet
will drag through thorns before we reach gentler ground.
But I sit. I wait. I bear witness.
I do not fix, for nothing can be fixed as it was.
I do not heal alone, for healing is a sacred duet,
it is movement between her and me, between past and future,
between grief and grace.

I will tell her: you are not the sum of this injury.
You are the still‑small‑voice of light,
even when your skies are black.
I will tell her: though the shape of your story has changed
and you can no longer recognize your reflection,
you were, you are, and you will be known.
I will tell her: though you fear the world’s cold
and the distance of your greater self,
there is someone who remains unshaken
in the face of your storm—that someone is me.

And I will show her: this is okay.
This may never be okay in the sense of ‘everything returned to normal’,
but it can be tender, it can be gentle, it can be transformed.
The world may not bend back to the old ways,
but new ways of being are here—
in the inhalation of a shared breath,
in the simple holding of hands,
in the quiet solidarity of two souls
that will not let the darkness win.

Grief is not a guest to banish. It is a teacher.
It walks beside us with its heavy satchel of memories,
its weight tempered by the light of the present moment.
It grows like vine and root, entangled around hope—but
if we notice the green shoots,
we learn that even grief can yield the miracle of growth.
And though we cannot erase the past,
we can carry it into the future
with love as our banner,
with compassion as our compass,
with presence as our offering.

In the early hours—
when the world is quiet except for a heartbeat of longing—
I listen. I open my heart to the tremor inside me,
I breathe the uncertainty, the sorrow, the anger, the question:
“How do I journey with her to wholeness again?”
And then I soften. Because wholeness does not mean what it meant.
It does not mean the old ‘complete’ we once envisioned.
It means a new completeness—a different harmony.
It means the meeting point of brokenness and transcendence.

I recall how I once taught her to stand, to run, to dare.
Now I hold her hand while she stands on unfamiliar ground,
while she stumbles, while she asks again:
“Will I ever be me?”
And I tell her: you already are you.
Your essence is beyond the body, beyond the memory,
beyond the rote of daily motion.
You are the unquenchable breath of spirit
that no hardship can extinguish.

There will be mornings when she wakes
and the room seems colder, the shapes sharper, the losses fresher.
There will be nights when her cry echoes in the corridors of memory,
and the mother‑inside‑me flinches: I should have done more—
I should have held tighter—
I should have seen earlier.
But I remind her: I held what I could.
I stood when I had to stand.
And now we stand together.

Let’s walk this unknown terrain:
over hills of remembrance, through fields of faded expectation,
into valleys of weeping then upward toward ridges
where the sun filters through clouds and touches our faces.
We let the wind speak: not of what was lost,
but of what can be found.
We let the rain cleanse—not to forget—but to re‑make.
We let the moon witness—not just our pain—but our covenant:
to journey, to reach out, to abide.

In our conversations there will be silence:
the pregnant pause of things unsaid, the sacred hush of presence.
I will not rush her. I will not minimize.
I will not plaster over the horror with shallow hope.
But I will sit beside her.
I will listen after the words have died.
I will lean in when the world leans away.

And I will nurture:
a small flame of trust flickering in the cavern of trauma.
With patience, I will water it; with faith, I will shield it.
And in time—yes in time—it may become a hearth.
Warmth may return. Laughter may come back in new tones.
Her eyes may clear—or at least the world may look different.
She may not resume the exact path she once planned,
but a path will form beneath her feet anyway
and we will walk it together.

And I will remind her: you were born from love; you are held by love; you will live by love.
Your story is not over.
It has merely changed chapters.
Within the sorrow, a deeper tune pulses: the melody of resurrection, of renewal, of sacred becoming.
I believe in that melody.
I believe we will find it.

I will tell her of sacred geography:
the map not found in textbooks, but in the heart’s atlas—
where sorrow becomes pilgrimage,
where loss becomes offering,
where togetherness becomes sanctuary.
We may pass through chambers of grief,
but at the threshold we’ll pause and breathe—
and in that breathing we’ll gather the shards of what was shattered
and build something luminous.

In that luminous space, the child she once was
and the mother I once was
and the woman she now is
will converge—not to reclaim the past—but to re‑dare the future.
A future not defined by what has failed
but by what continues to thrive.
We honour the memory; we free the pain.
We stand in the middle of what is broken
and we whisper: “We will be healed—not by forgetting—but by remembering differently.”

And when she asks: “Will I ever smile like before?”
I will say: “Yes—but your smile will carry depth now.
It will hold the memory of darkness and the strength to have faced it.
It will radiate the love that did not abandon you—even when you felt invisible.
It will honour your story.
It will be a new kind of radiant.”

When I see her hesitate, frozen in the limbo of “what‑was” and “what‑is‑no‑longer”,
I breathe a prayer into the air between us:
Spirit of healing, Spirit of renewal, come.
Ease this mother‑wound.
Renew this daughter‑soul.
Let them both inhabit the gift of now.

And even if the world around us remains unchanged—
even if the calendar days keep turning and the old dreams don’t return—
we have something enduring: presence.
My presence. Her presence. Spirit’s presence.
And in that triad lies the whisper of wholeness.

So I remain:
a mother, wounded and witness.
A daughter, longing and luminous.
A heart open, listening, waiting.
Together we traverse the silence between the screams.
Together we step toward a horizon still veiled—but still there.

I may not can erase the past,
but I will carry it.
I may not be able to promise the old world back,
but I will promise companionship in the new.
I will tell her: you are held.
I will show her: you are loved.

And one day, in a gentle dawn, she may say:
“I feel it now—the stir of something gentle, something bright.”
And I will smile, because I will have seen the first flutter of a butterfly in our winter garden.
And I will whisper back: “Yes. You are coming back to yourself.
Not the same self.
A self refined by fire and fashioned by grace.
A self loved through it all.”

Demetria Mitchell is the author of The Prodigal Daughter of a King and Silent Whispers in the Deep, two inspiring works that reflect her deep faith, resilience, and storytelling passion. She has also contributed to the uplifting anthology Angels Working Overtime, where her words continue to touch hearts and encourage others. Residing in Eastman, Georgia, she is a proud mother of three and a loving grandmother to seven beautiful grandchildren. Beyond writing books, she also channels her creativity into designing journals and calendars that inspire reflection, gratitude, and purpose in daily life. Her writing journey is a testament to perseverance, faith, and the power of sharing one’s story to uplift others.