Before you hush another's cries, hold your own trembling voice with grace. Before you wipe small sticky hands, wash your heart in a quiet place. You are a garden, overgrown— weeds of shame, and roots of gold. Pull softly at what’s no longer true, let your soul's bright green colour come through. Tuck yourself into bed tonight, with lullabies you never knew. Wrap arms around your longing child, say, “Darling, I believe in you.” Forgive the days you rushed along, too weary to play, too sad to speak. Your breath is sacred. Take it slow. You’re allowed to rest. To be. To seek. Parent yourself like someone dear— like the child you once were, still. Feed your hope, comb out your fears, and meet yourself with gentlest will. Only when your well is full can your love spill out and stay. To teach a child to dance in light, you must find your sunlit way.
FAMINELY There is a kind of hunger that doesn't start in the stomach. It begins in the space between a newborn’s cry and the silence that answers it. Not the comforting hush of a held child— but the cold absence. The still air. The flicker of a screen lighting a mother’s face as she scrolls past the sound. The breast is replaced by a bottle that is tilted by a hand that is thinking of other things. The eyes that once locked in primal bond are now distracted, tired, gone. The father steps in, shoulders slumped with the weight of not-enough. He smells like exhaustion— like trains, like missed moments. He looks at the child as if trying to remember what it was he promised. He doesn’t stay long. Just long enough to touch the air near the crib, and vanish into the next demand. We were meant to be touched. To be sung to, sweated on, suckled, rocked until the boundaries between self and other dissolved. Instead— we are weaned on distance. Soothed by algorithms. Raised by convenience. A...