“To love someone long-term is to attend a thousand funerals of the people they used to be. The people they’re too exhausted to be any longer. The people they don’t recognize inside themselves anymore. The people they grew out of, the people they never ended up growing into.”
– Heidi Priebe
Sometimes the Ripples Overwhelm Me
Seventeen years ago today, on August 8, 2008, I clicked “Publish” on my very first blog post. I didn’t fully realize what I was starting, only that something inside me wanted to come out in written words.
That ripple is still moving.
I’ve changed since then—sometimes slowly, sometimes in an instant. When I go back and reread those early posts, I see I’m not the same person anymore. No one is. We let go of some things as we age, and grow into other things.
So in this year of Ripple, it feels like the right moment to finally open something else from the past, something I’ve wanted to read for a long time: my mother’s journals.
I’d already read a collection of letters Mama wrote to me to be read after she died. They moved me when I first read them. I’m moved still as I remember them now.
But reading her journals feels different.
My older sister has kept them safe since our mother died in 2010. I borrowed them from my sister months ago—scattered pages, some numbered, most not, held together in a clear plastic bag. A few are clipped together.
Yet still I didn’t read them. Maybe it felt intrusive. Or maybe I liked the idea of still having something unread from my mom. Something left to discover.
Until now.
The One Question That Changed Everything
I sit down in my chair, her papers in my hands. But before I start reading, I pause once again. I ask myself: “Should I just leave the past alone? Let the good memories be enough? Why risk discovering something I might not want to know?”
I brush off the questions.
Until a more important question surfaces that is too loud to ignore:
“What might I still learn from my mother?”
This question is enough. I give myself permission to get comfortable and start reading.
“Just In Case Someone Reads This”
I leaf through the pages. Seeing my mother’s handwriting after all these years is jarring. I pull out the top sheet.
The very first sentence gives me a chill:
“Just in case someone finds and reads this, just realize that much of the time I was writing, I was under tremendous stress and may have written some things I normally wouldn’t say.”
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
She continues:
“If it should offend anyone, it was not meant to. I just wrote what I felt at that time to release pressure.”
What am I about to uncover about my precious mom?
Her Words, Her Life—and Mine Too
The next page I pick up is an unsent letter to Mama’s father—Granddaddy, to me—on his 86th birthday. He was still alive at the time, but struggling in poor health and dementia.
In her letter, Mama pours out an apology for having to put him in a care facility once he could no longer stay at home. She writes it was the hardest day of her life.
I cry when I read about some of her other hardest days—because they are about me. The day my first husband left. The day I found out our sweet baby Kali might not make it.
I see how my pain was also her pain.
I continue reading. In another entry, she writes:
“I’m 53 and I’ve lived my whole life trying to please either my daddy or my husband. That’s why I enjoy being alone so much. I only have myself to please.”
That line touches something in me. It still resonates. Not just for her, but for all among us longing to meet other people’s expectations.
And I also laugh as I read. I hear her grumble about Granddaddy always being either too hot or too cold and still wanting his own mother (Mama Coleman was still alive then!) to keep tending to his every need.
I’m reminded that this mother I remember so admirably was also beautifully human. Her words are that of a real person living amidst uncertainties and complexity in a complicated world.
Just like me and my words in my world.
Rippling Forward
Reading Mama’s words is helping me look more kindly at my own past self. Looking at the one who blogged in 2008 with ideas that don’t always fit comfortably with who I am in 2025, I see I need to give myself grace for the changes, just as I’m giving grace to Mama.
Maybe I’ll finish reading her journals by September 8, the 15th anniversary of her death. Or maybe not; I’m not rushing. I’m not sure I want to ever finish reading.
I’ll always have more to learn from my mother. Like how to be kinder, more resilient, more courageous. I want her ripples to forever touch and change my life.
Her journals also show me the value of ripples I send forward myself—things I do and stories I tell and words I write, as my mom said, “just in case someone reads this.”
To honor my rippling, this year I’ve been working on:
- Creating photos albums for my grandchildren, pictures they can look at when they’re older to visualize where they came from
- Publishing life stories in my Storyworth book, remembering making mud pies at Mamaw’s every Mississippi summer and surviving a category 4 hurricane on my honeymoon
- Gathering my end-of-life paperwork—hopefully not to be needed soon, but because loving my children in the future also means getting my things in order now
Finding Not Just Mama, But Me
Just as I’ve changed from who I was, I will continue to change into who I’ll be. Just like my mother did. And just like my own children and grandchildren will—all of us fully human, complete in our fragility and also in our strength.
“But it is not our job to hold anyone accountable to the people they used to be. It is our job to travel with them between each version and to honor what emerges along the way.”
– Heidi Priebe
In the meantime, before my mother’s journals get boxed back up again, I’ll keep showing up for her truths on the loose-leaf pages in her blue and black scribbles.
I don’t know what else I’ll find on these pages. But I do know who I’ll find. My mama.
And I’ll also find me.
Because of who she was, I am who I am. It’s how life ripples on, one generation through another.
Coming and going. Yet always still here.
Forever.
Is there someone in your past who still teaches you new lessons? Share in the comments.
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