Letter to my Daughter

You have a choice to make here: are you going to continue the cycle, or are you going to break it? Keeping your son away from me hurts him; there’s no question about that. I thought you were being hurt, and I was trying to protect you, not punish anyone when I kept your grandfather away from you. I have said that I was wrong and I am sorry, but there was never any malice involved.

Your stepmother has hurt you in an attempt to hurt me. She never should have sent you any intimate communication between your father and me, which she didn’t legally acquire. That is my intellectual property, and both of you violated my privacy. Your mother writes porn. Get over it. You chose to read them, and she chose to send them to you instead of my husband because beneath her sweet facade, she is exceptionally cruel, and that’s the most damaging thing she could do to me: destroy my relationship with you. It was deliberate, and she did not care that the real damage would be to you and your son.

My relationship with your father is complicated, and it’s also none of your business. Further, you have no right to judge me. Regardless of every horrible mistake I’ve made as a mother, I never role modeled playing victim, and I raised you better than to accept one side of a partial story from a bit character who walked in around chapter forty of my life and accept what she says about your horrible mother as anything other than an extremely skewed, biased perspective. She used my writing as a weapon against me, as shock value to poison you against me. Aside from the memory pieces, which are extremely personal and never meant for anyone’s eyes except your father’s, it is fiction. You can ask ******—she’s been editing my work. Vocal is not the only platform I publish on, and Harper Lewis is not my only pseudonym. I’ve never been judgmental about your sexuality, and since my sexuality is what got you here in the first place, it is extremely disrespectful and out of place for you to judge mine. I’m sorry you learned this the way you did. I tried multiple times to tell you, but you said you weren’t ready to hear it. I won’t have your stepmother cheapen the love that created you. I suppose my real greatest mistake was not having the DNA test when you were born, but I wasn’t ready to know yet. The Walden Pond pictures of you were taken the day after I got the results, on your father’s 30th birthday. Boston was the password, and I called for the results from a pay phone in the Atlanta airport during our layover (we flew out of Augusta) for our flight to Boston. I had an interview with Leslie Epstein at Boston University. We met in his home, and had tea, and there was amazing art and beautiful books were everywhere, and he was impressed that I had read his early work. He personally read my work; Starkey Flythe and WP Kinsella wrote letters of recommendation for me. It looked like I had a real chance to go to Boston University and take classes with Robert Pinsky and Susannah Kasen.

Your father and his mother, your grandmother, were part of your life by Christmas. He told me about the cancer, and I didn’t apply to Boston University because I didn’t want to take that time with you away from her. That’s why we went to Charleston—it had a late application deadline, it was close, and they offered me an assistantship. It’s also why we spent my entire semester break in Waynesboro, and when it snowed on Christmas Eve, I knew it was her last Christmas. The following summer was hard. I think that was the summer I started bodysurfing with you on my back, and it was my salvation. I miss bodysurfing.

I had to give up my assistantship after my third semester, because I had to drop a class after your grandmother died. My whole world had just shattered—she had become my best friend, I had been banned from attending her funeral, and she was my only real help raising a child by myself. And your father and I had just fallen apart again; I was as surprised as you were; more so. I was not expecting him to say anything like that to me, much less you. I’ve questioned myself about it repeatedly ever since it happened, and my only fault is having you call him. Yes, I remember that it was my idea, but I will not take the blame for what he said or for his abandonment. No, I don’t make everything about me—I make everything about you. The truth is that he abandoned me, too, and it is not my fault that he abandoned us, nor is it yours. But you can’t forgive me for forgiving him. I forgive myself. The rest is up to you.

If it weren’t for my friends, I have no idea what I would have done. I did my best to hold myself together for you. I went to the counseling center twice a week. I dropped a class. I kept going. It took everything in me to just get through the day. I couldn’t stand to be inside those same walls, down in that hole, and I found the place on tenth street, right on the marsh, and it helped, and it was $150 a month cheaper with cable included.

Where was your godmother ? Do you remember her visiting us in Charleston? Not once. And everything she knows about your father and me is second or third hand at best. Don’t you dare accept her partial knowledge as the whole picture.

I’m sorry that he couldn’t be honest with his wife about me. I’ve always been honest with my husband about him. I don’t care if you believe me or not—I know what’s true. I’ve been so honest with my husband that your father feels betrayed by me. My love isn’t limited, and you shouldn’t let yours be, but don’t you dare tell me that I haven’t sacrificed for you, that I haven’t always done what I believed to be in your best interest, whether I fucked it up or not. I’ve never claimed to be perfect or a victim of anything. I’m better than that, and so are you.

Be your best self, be the best you can. I’ve always loved you, and I’ve always done the best I could for you, but one person could never be my whole world. When you’re ready to accept me for who I am, we can talk, but I will not tolerate another whatever that was on Tuesday.

💖

Love,

Mom