Letter Unsent: 2nd Quarter 2026

Dear Mary, I'm Turning 42

 

Dear Mom, 

I'm turning 42 in September, less than three months from now.

For most of my life, I have carried the quiet responsibility of trying to fix things. Fix situations. Fix relationships. Fix problems that were never mine to solve. I thought love looked like carrying the weight of everything and everyone.

Lately, I've been learning something different.

I'm moving from being the fixer of all things to simply letting things be.

Not because I don't care. Not because I've given up. But because I am finally beginning to understand that every burden does not belong to me. Some things need room to unfold on their own. Some people need space to walk their own paths. Some answers only arrive when we stop chasing them.

As I approach 42, I find myself exploring every corner of my curiosity. Poetry. Children's books. Business ideas. New possibilities. Dreams that once felt too distant to take seriously.

And instead of asking, What if it fails?

I am asking a different question.

What if everything goes well?

What if the doors open?

What if the opportunities arrive?

What if the seeds I've been planting for years finally begin to bloom?

For the first time in a long time, I am allowing myself to imagine a future that is not built on survival, but on possibility.

And through it all, I am learning something about you, too.

You have been physically gone for many years now, yet I am beginning to understand that absence is not the same thing as abandonment.

There are moments when I feel your presence in a memory, a lesson, a prayer, a piece of wisdom that surfaces exactly when I need it. There are days when I realize that the love you gave did not leave this world when you did.

It remains.

It lives in the choices I make, the kindness I offer, the stories I tell, and the woman I continue to become.

So as 42 approaches, I am choosing trust over fear.

I am choosing possibility over limitation.

I am choosing to believe that I am supported, guided, and deeply loved.

And perhaps the greatest lesson of all is this:

Even with you physically gone, I have never truly been alone.

Love always,

Shauna