“We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.” ~ Joseph Campbell

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Dearest Daughter,

I’m writing this anonymously out of respect for your privacy and mine, without knowing if you’ll ever read it. I pray you find it, and there is something that I shared in this letter that only you will recognize, that you will know this letter is specifically for you.

The great American writer, educator, and mythologist Joseph Campbell once wrote that myths are not lies; they are the truest stories we have, told in symbols, because some truths are too big for ordinary words. I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately, because what I want to tell you is one of those truths. I love you. I have never stopped, and I never will.

Campbell said, “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” For me, this letter is that cave. The silence between us has been long, and writing into it is frightening — but the treasure on the other side is you, and so I must write.
I think about you every day. I think about the little girl who liked to read bedtime stories together aloud / bake cookies together / loved writing, crafts, and art. That bond between us was and is real. In Campbell’s language, it is one of the eternal things that is not bound to time, not erasable by distance or years. I carry it with me and I always will.

I want to say something honest, because you always deserve honesty from me.
I know that you remember what you saw when you were eleven. I know you were standing only a few feet away from what happened. No child should ever witness what you witnessed, and I am so deeply sorry that you did. Witnessing it victimized you, too. Your suffering mattered and still does, too.

Campbell wrote that the hero’s journey often begins with a major wound, a defining moment that splits one’s world into two, a before and an after. You were given a terrible emotional and psychological wound that day. You did not choose it, and you did not deserve it. If some of the years since have felt like you’ve been wearing a mask and are wandering through a dark forest, I completely understand. The forest is 100% real. It is not your fault that you were sent into it, and so young. Loyalty can be demanded of a child in selfish ways that create fear. I’m not sharing this to ask you to sort any of it out. I say it because I want you to know: your experience matters. Your experience is seen. I see the complexity of what you’ve had to carry, and I don’t need you to resolve it before you return.

Here is what I want you to know: I’m always your mother. There is nothing you did that needs an apology. The door is open for you. It has always been open, and it will remain open. Campbell believed every hero’s journey ends with the return. The return is the coming back, transformed, to the place and the people who have been waiting. I’m waiting for you. When you’re ready, whether that is tomorrow, next year, or ten years from now. I will meet you where you are at and as whatever feels reasonably possible and doable for you.

I have so much faith in us. Real and sincere things don’t disappear; they wait quietly underneath everything else. Follow Your Bliss, Campbell said, and the universe will open doors where there were only walls. I believe one of those doors leads us back together, and I believe you will find your way in your own time. Until then, dear daughter, please know that you are loved very deeply, unconditionally, without end. You are thought of every single day. You are missed more than any letter could hold. And you are, and always will be, my daughter.

With all my love,
Mom