24/06/2025
So I was 12 when I first saw my mother cr¥.
Not the soft, graceful téars you see in movies — no. This one was raw, úgly. She sat on the kitchen floor, her hands over her face, and her slippers abandoned somewhere behind her like they had run away from the pain too.
I had just returned from school, and I heard her sobbing before I even opened the door.
I stood there… frozen.
Because for the first time, I realized something: My mother was human.
She wasn’t always the iron woman who cooked, cleaned, corrected, and protected.
She wasn’t always the unbreakable figure I imagined when I thought of strength.
She was tired.
That day, I overheard her speaking on the phone with my uncle. My father had emptied the joint account and dis∆ppeared again. Rent was due. We hadn’t paid school fees. And the neighbors were already g•ssiping about how “a woman without a man is like a house without a roof.”
Ezekiel, would you believe that later that night, she smiled like nothing happened. She told me, “Eat well, my son. Tomorrow, we rise again.”
I didn’t understand it fully then. But now as an adult, I get it.
I get what it means to show up with an empty heart. To smile when your soul is screaming. To be called strong when you’re barely breathing. I’m 32 now.
And just two weeks ago, I saw those same slippers — old, cracked, and faded — at the bottom of her wardrobe.
I picked them up, and I wépt like the 12-year-old I once was.
Because those slippers had walked through p∆in, p•verty, betr∆yal, and m•ckery — and they still carried my mother forward.
💬 Here's for everyone who sees this story, have you ever realized your parent is more than just a parent — but a person with silent b∆ttles?
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Tag someone who’s walked in quiet p∆in.
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