I was scrolling through Quora recently and a certain story caught my eye. A young man was narrating,
“When my father turned 13 years old he was woken early by his mother. She silently led him downstairs to the dark kitchen where she lit a light and started making him a big breakfast. His father was sitting at the table silently. My dad was confused at the situation and even more so when his mother put a big plate of bacon and eggs on the table in front of him – and not his father. His father reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of Camel cigarettes and a box of wooden matches and pushed them across the table to the boy.
“I have tuberculosis,” he said to the boy, “You’re the man of the family now.”
It was 1930 and he had 12 younger brothers and sisters plus his parents to feed.”
So to the amazingly strong person reading this, let me be the first to say this: I’m sorry.
I’m sorry you were forced to face the harshness of life so young. Having to grow up is hard enough, but having to do it so long before you are actually prepared is unfair.
This letter is to you: the kids who took on the roles of mom and dad. To the kids who always put their siblings before themselves. To the kids who never got to play. The kids who never got to throw tantrums.To the kids who became the shoulder on which their parents could lean on at age 7.
This letter is for you.
This is to the kids who stand at the roadside and sell to us maize, the kids who move car by car in traffic shouting “bitano bitano”for the mangoes you carry. The kids who do not have the luxury of going to school and stay home to work so that their younger siblings can get a chance at an education. The kids who’ve had their childhoods reaped away; the ones who’ve been forced to jump many years ahead into the future yet their minds and bodies carry the signs of an 8 year old.
This letter is for you.
You are enough.
Regardless of what you have come to believe; you are enough. Despite not being able to put enough food on the table and even though you could never seem to get it just right enough for mum or dad, I’m here to tell you; you have done enough. For years you have.
The situation your family is in, the decisions your siblings have made are not the stuff you could control. So it is okay to pat yourself on the back for a job well done and for playing to your best ability, the role of a lifetime.
Bask in the strength you’ve come to discover you possess. Embrace the tenacity you’ve had to develop in order to survive. Smile for your resilience has kept you afloat. Embrace every part of yourself for you are proof humanity can endure the worst of the worst, regardless of age, race, circumstance or background. We can always push through and come out the winners.
It is always okay to cry.
It’s okay to allow yourself to feel the loss you have experienced. You didn’t get to play, you didn’t get to climb up on your mother’s lap, you didn’t get to cry.
So cry now. Cry for the childhood you lost. Cry for the child you never had the chance to be.
Let your body embrace that loss as you crumble down in tears. Let the rivers that flow from your eyes speak of the things you’ve always had to leave unsaid. Let the anguish in your eyes preach of the necessity to let children slowly grow. Let the moans from your soul tell the rest of us the importance of allowing a child to be a child. Cry till you cannot cry no more.
Let your tears drown you in waves of rebirth from which you will rise stronger than you were before.
For when a seed is buried, it is planted into the soil as a tiny piece of nature. But when it rises from the ground, it raises ten times better and larger than when it went down.
Just like that seed, you will raise.
From those waves you will arise.
Stronger than before
Braver than before
More vulnerable than before.
For to lay your wounds open and allow your heart to weep is to allow yourself to be vulnerable.
And what is courage without vulnerability?
Show me a man who has slain his own dragons and overcome his own demons that didn’t do so without fear in his heart, uncertainty in his chest and risk looming all around him but he went ahead anyway.
You have carried your families on your shoulders since you still had missing gaps in your teeth but you’ve done so with a grace and dignity we can all learn from. So take pride in that my friend, take pride and find the grace within yourself to be at peace with all you’ve had to overcome.
I hope a time comes when you will no longer feel the need to be the best in the room, to be perfect in all your endeavours and to mask so many of your emotions. A man can be a man and still allow himself to feel. A woman can be a woman and still allow herself to love herself.
I hope a time comes when you can relentlessly pursue every passion you’ve had to let go off and every dream you’ve had to give up on. I hope a time comes when you can live for yourself and still care, as best as you can, for those around you. I hope a time comes when you can absolutely say you’re free; for you belong to no one but yourself.
And for the children who are still children at heart but living the lives of adults, this is my word to you;
It will get better. It does get better. A time is coming that will make every step you’ve had to skip worthwhile. The knowledge of that may not lessen the emotions you’re feeling right now but may it bathe you in the sweet comfort of knowing that just as the sun rises after a night of darkness, so will you.
Look inward always.
When you seek for love from those around you that maybe unable to give it; look inward.
When you seek praise and celebration for your efforts from the people around you; look inward.
When you seek the comfort of a warm hug or the soothing words of an adult and find none; look inward.
When times get tougher and you seek for strength from depleted sources around you; look inward. When the skies threaten to fall and darkness and despair envelop you; look inward.
For deep within you lie boundless rivers of joy, of love and comfort, of strength and endurance. And when everyone else forgets to tell you; look inward and know that you are enough.
You will always be enough. With All My Love_S.
