If She Were Here: What are your dreams and aspirations?

Dear Momma, 

This is the first prompt in the journal I made for you: “What are your dreams and aspirations?” It's a question I wrote to be from mom to kid— which means if this were a perfect world, if you were still here, this is what you would have written and slid across the table to me. I can picture it. You would have written it in your handwriting, underlined it maybe, and left it somewhere I'd find it. I wish I had more of your handwriting, that’s part of where the idea for the journal came from. 

So. Mom. Here's my answer.

I'm 31 now. You missed a lot. But I think you'd recognize me — maybe more than I expected you would. My dreams have gotten quieter than they used to be. I don't mean smaller — I mean more honest. Growing up, I think I wanted things because I thought I was supposed to want them. Now I want things because I actually want them, and I've learned to tell the difference, and that feels like a gift I had to give myself.

I want Caring Catalogs to become something that outlasts me. I started it for you — because of you, because the journal I made was a way to do what we never quite finished doing together. But it became something bigger than grief. It became a mission. I want to reach the people who were taught to take care of everyone else first and never learned how to receive care. I want to hand them something and say: start here.

I want to keep learning. I think you knew this about me — I can't stop thinking, can't stop asking questions, can't stop trying to understand how people work. How my mind works. Psychology, faith, the way stories heal things. The way God heals. I want to write more. I think there's so much potential in me and I’m excited to figure out what it is. 

I want peace. Not the kind that means nothing is hard — the kind that means I'm okay even when things are. I've been working on that. Not to be redundant, but it’s hard. 

I want to keep baking like you taught me. I want to stay rooted here, in Honolulu, in the valley that watched me grow from beginning to now. I want to keep showing up in everything I do and mean it. I want my marriage to be something we're both proud of.

And honestly, Mom? I want to keep talking to you like this. Even if it's just me, writing into the blank space where your answer would be.

I think that counts as a dream too. 

Love you forever, Carrie

Just Between Mom & Me is a guided pass-back-and-forth journal for mothers and the people they procreated — a place to have the conversations that are so easy to put off. This blog series, If She Were Here, works through the prompts as if my mom could still answer back. If you have a mom, a daughter, son, chosen family — the journal is here.