Blog
A Mother’s Prayer
For Every Mother Who Has Ever Loved and Lost
and Still Chose to Rise
— ✦ —
I come as I am.
Not as they said I was.
Not as the world requires me to be.
But as I am.
Tired. Sacred. Still standing.
• • •
I pray to God, to Source, to the Universe,
to the Force that held me together
when everything inside me was coming apart.
Whatever name You answer to —
You know mine.
You have heard me cry it into pillows at 3 AM.
You have watched me whisper it into silence
when no one else was listening.
• • •
This prayer is not soft.
This prayer is not sorry.
This prayer does not beg.
This prayer stands up.
• • •
I pray for every mother.
For the mother whose child stopped calling.
For the mother whose child stopped breathing.
For the mother whose child chose the needle,
the bottle, the street, the cell, or the silence.
• • •
For the mother who raised someone else’s children
and was never called mother at all.
For the grandmother raising grandbabies
because the generation between couldn’t hold it together.
• • •
For the single mother who works three jobs
and still can’t afford to rest.
For the military mother who sends her son to war
and sleeps with her phone against her chest.
• • •
For the mother who was called “too much”
by the child she gave everything to.
For the mother who was called “not enough”
by the child she sacrificed everything for.
• • •
For the Black mother.
For the Brown mother.
For the white mother no one believes is suffering
because the house looks fine from the outside.
• • •
For the mother in the pew.
For the mother in the mosque.
For the mother on the yoga mat.
For the mother who lost her faith
and is building a new one with her bare hands.
• • •
For the father carrying this grief in his jaw,
swallowing screams to stay strong.
This prayer sees you too.
• • •
I declare over my life:
That my love was not wasted.
That the meals I cooked were sacraments.
That the diapers I changed were devotions.
That the nights I did not sleep were vigils.
That every school drop-off, every Band-Aid,
every tear I wiped with my bare hands
was a prayer made flesh.
• • •
I declare that I am not what they called me.
Not toxic. Not controlling. Not the problem.
I am a woman who loved without limit
and learned the hard way that limits are holy.
• • •
I declare that my grief does not define me.
That the empty chair at my table
is not the measure of my motherhood.
That the phone that does not ring on Mother’s Day
does not erase the years I answered every call.
• • •
And I pray with fire:
That truth rises where gaslighting once lived.
That justice blooms in the garden where guilt was planted.
That the lies told about me rot in the mouths
that spoke them.
• • •
That no mother ever again has to explain
why her child left.
That no mother ever again dies of a broken heart
because she didn’t know she was allowed
to set it down.
• • •
That the daughters who left
find their mirrors before it’s too late.
That their seeing does not destroy them
but delivers them.
• • •
That the grandchildren remember.
That they feel, somewhere in their bones,
the love I poured into their earliest years —
the dinosaur pajamas, the bike rides,
the songs I sang when the thunder came.
Let them remember. Even if they don’t know my name.
• • •
And I pray for myself.
That I stop apologizing for surviving.
That I stop shrinking to make room
for people who never made room for me.
• • •
That I sleep through the night.
That my jaw unclenches.
That my blood pressure comes down.
That my body stops keeping score
of every wound my mouth refused to name.
• • •
That I laugh again — the real laugh,
the belly one, the one from before.
That I cook for the joy of it.
That I dance in my kitchen to Earth, Wind & Fire
like my parents are still alive
and the house still smells like Sunday.
• • •
That I continue to rise.
That I continue to write.
That I continue to say No
as a form of sacred Yes.
• • •
This is not a prayer of surrender.
This is a prayer of reclamation.
I was born with hands that cradle.
A voice that steadies storms.
A spine stitched with sacrifice.
And a heart that refuses to stop beating
for a world that forgot to love me back.
• • •
I have bled at the altar of love
and I am still here.
I have poured out wine and wisdom
into children who could not hold the cup
and I am still here.
• • •
My mother is gone.
My father is gone.
My daughter chose to leave.
My grandchildren were taken.
• • •
And I.
Am.
Still.
Here.
• • •
Not soft. Not silent.
But sovereign.
And still holy.
• • •
Amen.
Ashe.
Inshallah.
Namaste.
And so it is.
• • •
This prayer belongs to you now.
Bookmark it. Photograph it. Tape it to your mirror.
Pray it at dawn. Pray it at midnight.
Pray it on the days you forget who you are.
This prayer will remember for you.
