I know who I was.
A mother.
A grandmother.
A wife.
A daughter.
A granddaughter.
A friend.
A niece, a cousin, an aunty.
But do any of those names
tell you who I am?
Do they tell you how I think,
what I hold sacred,
how I move through the world
when no one is watching?
And if I have been all these things,
does that mean they are me?
Or is the truer question
who I am becoming?
When roles are torn away,
not gently set down
but ripped from the body,
you are forced to ask
what remains
when everything familiar is gone.
What I find is this:
I am a person with a beautiful heart.
I love deeply.
I care without calculation.
I notice the quiet ones.
I see sorrow before it speaks
and joy before it dares to.
I try, in small and imperfect ways,
to leave the world kinder
than I found it.
Sometimes I am happy.
Lately, more often, I am sad.
Because the things that once defined me
no longer answer
when I say my name.
And so I turn inward now,
not as a loss
but as an invitation,
and ask myself, softly, bravely:
Who are you?