A love letter in chapters
Everything I
owe to you
Written with my whole heart
"There is no way to repay what a mother gives. But I can try to put it into words, all of it, from the very beginning."
Chapter One
The Beginning
My earliest memory is a simple one. A big chair, the kind that swallows you whole when you're small, a slice of pizza in my hand, and something on TV. I don't remember what was playing. I just remember feeling completely, utterly settled. Safe in a way that only makes sense in retrospect. That feeling had a source, and its name was you.
I remember you taking me tobogganing. I remember the cold and the hill and the speed, but more than any of that, I remember you. How alive you were. How loud your laugh was. How your energy made everything feel like an event worth showing up for. You didn't just take me places. You made the world feel like it was worth being excited about.
What I didn't fully understand back then was how much you were carrying underneath all of that brightness. From early on, you were navigating something most parents don't have a roadmap for: my autism. The uncertainty of it. The extra miles it demanded. The moments where you must have felt lost, and just kept going anyway, for me.
When the waitlist for my autism program stretched beyond six years, you didn't wait. You enrolled yourself in a course and became my program. You became the thing I needed. That is not something every mother does. That is not something most mothers would even think to do. You looked at a system that said "not yet, not soon, not for years" and decided that wasn't good enough for your child. So you learned. You studied. You showed up every single day and did the work that trained specialists are paid to do, out of nothing but pure love and refusal to accept less for me.
I would not be the man I am without that choice. Full stop. That single act of devotion, quiet, uncelebrated, exhausting, changed the entire trajectory of my life. And you did it like it was simply what a mother does. That's the most extraordinary part.
Chapter Two
Growing Up Beside You
Growing up, my happiest days had one thing in common: you were there. I remember Wonderland, the rides, the noise, the summer heat so thick it stuck to everything. My thighs would chaffe so badly it hurt to walk, and I didn't care. Not even a little. Because I was there with you, and that made it the best day in the world every single time.
But the place that lives deepest in me is the Yogi Bear campsite. Those trips gave me something I didn't have a word for back then. I'd call it peace now. The specific, unhurried quiet of being exactly where you're supposed to be. The campfires especially. I can still feel the warmth of them. That warmth and you are the same thing in my memory, inseparable. You brought that calm with you wherever we went, and at the campsite, it could just breathe.
We got caught in a downpour heading back to the yurt we had left wide open. Soaked and laughing, we made it back to find the site perfectly dry. It had been pouring just half a kilometre away, and there we were, untouched. Just the two of us in our own little pocket of the world. Then there was the jet boat ride, every time, both of us half-hanging over the edge and somehow not ending up in the water. The kind of moments that are ridiculous and perfect and ours.
I didn't have a lot of friends growing up. That's just the honest truth. But I never really felt the weight of that, because I had you. My best friend. My constant. You were the one I talked to, the one who gave me advice that actually made sense, the one who showed up without conditions. Other kids had friend groups. I had something better. I had my rock.
I know now that not everyone gets that from their parent. Most people don't. And I had it so fully, so completely, that I didn't even understand how rare it was. I understand now.
Chapter Three
The Hard Times
Depression is a dark and private thing. It doesn't always look like sadness from the outside. Sometimes it just looks like a kid who is somewhere else, even when he's right in front of you. You always found me there. You found programs. You found doctors. You found the right pills at the right times, navigating a system that is confusing and exhausting even for someone who isn't already struggling. You did it all anyway.
But the thing I'll never forget is smaller than any of that. You always said you wanted to put a smile on your kids' faces three times a day. I don't know if you realize how much I held onto that. Even on the days when I was at my worst, when everything felt grey and far away, you managed it. Most days you hit that number. You found the joke, the moment, the small ridiculous thing that cracked me open just enough. That is not nothing. That is everything.
And then there were the times that were worse than bad. The times I tried to leave. I want to say this plainly, because you deserve to hear it plainly: through every suicide attempt, you were never once disappointed in me. You were never angry. You didn't make me feel broken or like a burden or like something to be ashamed of. You understood my pain and you felt it with me. Most people don't know how to do that. You did it without hesitation, without flinching, without making it about yourself. You just sat in it with me and made sure I knew I wasn't alone. I am here. That is why.
School was its own kind of war. I was lazy, honestly, flagrantly lazy, and I slacked off more than I should have. You knew it. I knew it. But you never once made me feel stupid, because you also knew something I couldn't always see about myself: that I wasn't. You pushed me harder when I needed it, not because you were disappointed, but because you could see what I was capable of even when I couldn't be bothered to look. You believed in my intelligence before I did. That matters more than any grade ever could.
And the breakups. Every heartbreak you were right there, ready with a shoulder and, when the time was right, some very pointed and very satisfying opinions about the women who had done the breaking. You had a gift for that. The precise moment when sympathy became solidarity. I always left those conversations feeling a little lighter and a little more on my own side. That was you. It was always you.
Chapter Four
What You Gave Me
People talk about inheritance like it's money or furniture. What you gave me is harder to put in a will but worth so much more. It lives in how I move through the world every single day, in the things I value most about myself. And every last one of them came from you.
My stubbornness. The flat refusal to be moved when something matters. People have called it a flaw. I call it yours, and I wear it proudly. My kindness and my care for other people, the instinct to notice when someone is hurting and to do something about it. That came directly from watching you. You are the most quietly generous person I have ever known, and some of that seeped into me whether I tried or not.
My intelligence. You saw it before I did, believed in it before I earned it, and refused to let me talk myself out of it on my worst days. My skepticism, the part of me that asks questions and doesn't accept easy answers, that thinks critically instead of just going along. You taught me that too, mostly by example.
And then there is the sense of humor. I want to be clear about this, and as much as I hate to admit it: you are the funniest person I know. Not in a polite, "my mom is funny" way. Genuinely, laugh-until-it-hurts funny. The kind of funny that catches you off guard. I don't know where you get it and I don't know how you've kept it through everything, but I am so glad some of it landed on me.
These are the things I value most about who I am. And they are yours. Every good thing in me has your fingerprints on it.
Chapter Five
Who I Became
I won't pretend I have it all figured out. I don't. I am still very much a work in progress, still making mistakes, still learning things about myself I probably should have learned earlier. But I am getting there. And that, honestly, feels like enough to be proud of.
What I do know is this: the clearest sign of you in my life isn't something I can point to on a shelf or show someone a photo of. It's in the small moments. The way I talk to people. The way I try to make them feel seen when they're struggling. The way I notice when someone in the room is hurting and feel the pull to do something about it. I don't always get it right. But I always try. And that instinct, that reflex toward other people, that is yours. I learned it from watching you do it my whole life without ever making a fuss about it.
When I am at my best, I am a reflection of you. Not a copy, you'd never let me get away with that, but something shaped by you. The kindness. The care. The way I try to show up. Those didn't come from nowhere. They came from a woman who showed me every day what it looks like to put other people first without losing yourself.
I look at who I am and I see you in all the good parts. That is not a small thing to be able to say. That is everything.
Mom,
Every time I tried to get the words right, they felt too small. They still do. But I am going to try anyway, because you deserve to hear it said plainly, all of it, not just implied or assumed.
I love you more than I know how to say. That is the truest sentence I have ever written.
What I don't think I have ever told you, not properly, is how much the small things meant. Not the big moments, though those mattered too. The small ones. The joke at the right time. The way you showed up on an ordinary Tuesday. The three smiles a day you committed to like it was your job, even when I made it hard. Those are the things I carry. Those are the things that got through on the days nothing else could. I don't know if you knew how much weight those small moments were holding. I need you to know.
I am still figuring out who I am. But I know this: wherever I land, I want to be someone who shows up for you the way you showed up for me. You spent so many years making sure I was okay, making sure I had what I needed, making sure I knew I was worth fighting for. I want to spend whatever comes next returning some of that. You deserve to be taken care of too.
When I look back at my life, you are in every good part of it. The warmth I feel at the thought of a campfire. The way I laugh. The way I try to treat people. The fact that I am here at all. That is you. That has always been you.
Thank you for being my mom. Thank you for choosing me, over and over again, even when I wasn't easy to choose. Thank you for being the funniest, most stubborn, most quietly extraordinary person I have ever known.
I love you. More than I know how to say. More than this letter can hold.