the memory-keeper
✨when love gets captured✨
I’m a keeper of memories. When I think about scrapbooking and journaling, a firework of giddiness explodes inside me.
We aren’t all built this way—my dear childhood friend describes wanting to throw up in her mouth at the suggestion of journaling—but for me, writing is my favorite tool to make sense of my life. Writing enables me to find deeper meaning in the fleeting moments.
For all three of my kids, I kept individual line-a-day journals, in which I wrote every single day of their lives for the first five years. I wrote the entries to my children directly, as if composing a long love letter to their future selves.
Reflecting on motherhood through letter-writing has become my preferred mode of memory-keeping for a few reasons. In the near-term, it helps me connect my inner emotional dots; and, inadvertently, it strengthens my side of my relationships with each of my kids. In the long-term, it’s given me the sense that my future adult children will have a portal into knowing their mom from her young parenting years. Also, I imagine it offering them insight into their own early development and growth.
So, even though I’ve had no concrete proof that the outcome of my memory-keeping efforts would matter, capturing my reflections, that would have otherwise slipped away unnoticed, has always felt like a worthy endeavor.
But just this week, my almost 14-year-old daughter unearthed and read to me the first email ever sent to her, which was from me, on her fifth birthday. I’d forgotten that I wrote it, but (with her permission) here is what I wrote:
(For context, as a little one, two of her nicknames were Magic and Muffin. Sometimes, we’d go all-in with Magic Muffin.)
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Date: November 19, 2015 at 8:34:40 PM EST
Subject: On your 5th birthday...
Magic Muffin,
I've just put you to bed at the end of your fifth birthday. Such a tired and happy child. Such a blessed mama.
When I was pregnant with you, I saw this little pink five-year journal in the bookstore, and I bought it to keep a record of our day-to-day lives together. (Journals have always been my Achilles heel.) Maybe it was the forever student (or English teacher) in me, but I liked the idea of a homework assignment as a new mom. And I think I subconsciously worried that my days as a stay-at-home mom would blend together and I'd lose track of the details that matter when you're asked ‘how was your day?’, but are hardly remembered the next day. I wanted proof, I think, that each day home with you (and any future siblings) was productive and meaningful.
So I bought the journal, and on the day you were born, after a long labor, powerful birth and intense first day together, I picked up that pink journal and began a five-year-long love letter to you that highlights the small stuff, the big stuff, my feelings, and my observations of your first five years of being. And then, last night, I wrote in the very last available space in the journal. I finished the letter on those last untouched lines. And poof, you turned five.
Now I have the proof that every day has been substantive. The years didn't fly by, at least it's clear that they didn't when I page through the pink journal. And yet, my baby is suddenly a child.
Just now, you paid me a visit. You have no idea that I'm writing you this letter. You don't yet read. But you came into the library, where I'm at the computer, in your new Frozen nightgown that your brother gave you for your birthday today, and you told me that you want to sleep with me tonight. We had our little back and forth, and I convinced you to go back to your room, and I promised to visit in twenty minutes to read you another story. You agreed to the plan. And now my phone's timer is set for twenty minutes, while you're in your bed drawing on your sketch pad and singing.
I still have a monitor on you at night. I know that you're five and quite independent, but I'm not yet ready to let go of this connection to your sleeping space. I saw a quote today that essentially said: my love will always be with you, as it is as much a part of you as breath. (unknown author) And I feel such a connection to this idea.
Since the day you were born five years ago, I have loved the soul that you are. I care about every one of your breaths. I sincerely do. I feel peace when I watch you breathe—I marvel at the notion that you are you, a separate being from me, yet my love for you, in many ways, is quite grander than my love for myself.
Being a mom is so frightening, because the weight of this love can be paralyzing. It's overwhelming. But for me, it is the best thing. The very best thing in my world.
Happy birthday, dear daughter. Thank you for being you.
My timer says that in one minute I'm due in your room to read that promised story. So off I go.
Love, Mommy
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My daughter’s face, upon reading aloud “Love, Mommy", melted into the tenderest of her expressions. We didn’t discuss how reading the love letter, as a teenager, made her feel, because the warmth she felt radiated.
And I, too, felt a surge of warmth from the letter; warmth toward her, but also toward my becoming self. The preserved words highlight the value of that particular time in my motherhood journey—five years in—and I’m grateful that the simple act of reading this letter dips me right back into that early stage of my devotion. It also validates many of my life choices since.
I must have suspected it when I wrote it—but certainly didn’t know for sure—that a love letter between a parent and child, is a powerful thing; it possesses an emotional power that intensifies with time, increasing in value, exponentially, as the years push on—and I know this because I just observed my teenage daughter experience my love letter’s afterglow.
With her adolescence and mental health on my mind, I’m comforted knowing that this letter lives in her inbox; at her fingertips and whenever she wants, she can access her little girl self and a comforting bedtime routine; she can connect, emotionally, to her home; and she can be reassured that she is deeply loved. As her mom, I intend to continue peppering her inbox with love-letters.
Professionally, I’ve entered fertile territory within the new branch of Everwell’s Legacy Work offering, by helping people write love letters for all kinds of moments (toasts, eulogys, occasions, and particularly Forever Letters, which are end-of-life love letters to one’s child that accompany a will). This work has revealed to me a vast terrain of love-rich emotions that live just under the surface of our collective selves—an untapped wealth that could so easily be shared.
As we all know, time keeps on ticking. The love letter you write today will only grow in value with each passing day. I urge you to sit down and just write the love letter. Perhaps you share it now; perhaps you save it for later. Either way, it’s never too late to capture the sentiments that live in the heart and mind of Today You, and it will always be a worthwhile investment in both the short-term and long-term of your relationship.
Your love, my friend, is the most valuable asset of your life.
Let’s keep growing.
🌱
Other ways I can support your inner self today:
Cozy up for fireside stories on Becoming Everwell with Linds.
Enroll in my FREE Masterclass: The 5-Step Framework to Thriving as a Midlife Mom. Or, take my QUIZ.
Get support writing a love letter through the Legacy Work branch of Everwell.
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