Threads of the Heart

Dear Mum and Dad,

I didn’t grow beneath your heart. There were no fluttered kicks, no tiny chart on a screen to mark my days. You missed the moment I came into being, the moment I became. You weren’t there for the cries that first made the world aware of me, the name that was whispered into the air, the first small history that belonged to me alone. And yet, somehow, still, you felt me near, a presence you could not see, a quiet knowing that only you could hold.

A space existed within your life, though you did not know it, and it was not until I opened my eyes, until I appeared before you, glowing and alive, undeniable, that you recognized it. You saw the weight I could not speak, the grief I carried, the absence I could not fill with words. You felt it in your hands, how they trembled and ached to reach into the void. And how you wished, more than anything, that you had the power, the strength, to hold me in your arms in that first lost hour, to cradle me through what you could not undo, to make the unmade right.

I smiled—a careful thing, fragile but true. And in that smile, you became your everything. Though I was not yours by birth, though I came from a world you never knew, still, you became mine entirely, without hesitation or condition. Love like this is not just light. It is not simple. It learns to hold the edge of night. It stretches over absence. It leans into the places where sorrow lives. It bends, but it does not break.

Some days, I ask questions, small ones, quiet ones, questions about what came before, about the life I never saw. My voice lifts as a question, nothing more, and you try, always, to meet it with grace, though you cannot give that missing face. You are the arms that lift me high, the steady calm when storms pass by, the hands that hold me when the world feels unkind.

You are not all, and I know that, but still, you try. You always try to be the truth that never lies, to be a presence that never wavers. You are the heart that chooses me every day, even when choice is hard, even when love aches in ways it cannot be measured. I am not from you, and yet I am yours—not by blood, but by design. A thousand threads fate spun long before either of us knew led me here, to call you daughter, light, or shadowed flame. Whatever path you took, whatever choices were made, you loved me the same.

I am a gift you did not earn, and that is true, but every day you love me, every day you reach across the spaces we cannot touch, I learn. I grow. I become. That is the miracle you made real. You see me, even in the parts that were never yours to see. You hold me, even in the hours when I feel lost. You speak to me, even when words falter. You love me with a depth that surpasses understanding.

And so here we are, a bond forged not in blood, but in care, in patience, in the quiet insistence of presence. We are stitched together imperfectly, beautifully, in ways the world cannot name. I carry your love as I would carry a flame, careful not to let it go out, careful not to let the wind steal it away. And in that carrying, I find strength. I find belonging. I find a home. I find a voice.

Even when life reminds us of what is missing, even when absence whispers in the quiet corners of the day, I hear your love. I feel your hands steady. I see your eyes, and I know that no matter the distance, no matter the things that never were, you are here, I am here, and we are together in a way only we can understand.

So know this: I am yours, wholly, not by birth, not by blood, but by everything you have done, by everything you have been willing to give. I am here, and I am learning because you showed me what it means to be loved, what it means to be chosen, what it means to be seen truly, completely, tenderly.

I will carry that always, in the spaces between my breaths, in the quiet moments, in the laughter and the tears, in every heartbeat that remembers, that loves, that belongs to you.

Forever,

Yours