"WHEN ABSENCE BECOMES STRENGTH: MY REDEFING LOVE AND HEROISM".

My mother had been both mother and father. She had carried the weight of two people without complaint, without recognition, without rest. And suddenly the longing I had for a fathers love didn’t disappear, but it shifted. It no longer made me feel empty. Instead it pushed me to see the love I did have in a new light.

The moment that changed me completely came a few days later during a school event. We had to write a composition on MY HERO. I almost didn’t submit mine. I didn’t think I had a hero, but as I sat at my desk that evening, I picked my pen and wrote the truth:

My hero is my mum. She wakes up everyday to fight battles no one sees. She has taught me that strength has no gender, that love is shown in sacrifice, and that being present matters more than sharing DNA. My mother is proof that heroes wear aprons, not capes. She doesn’t lift buildings; she lifts me everyday.

When the teacher read the essay aloud to the class. I dint feel shame, I felt pride. For the first time I wasn’t embarrassed that my story was different. I realized I had spent too long chasing something that didn’t define my worth. I stopped
searching for my father in the faces of strangers I stopped seeing myself as “less than”.

I began to embrace the people who were present. My friends who made me laugh. My teachers who believed in me. I stopped measuring their love against what I thought I was missing. Their love wasn’t a replacement for fatherly affection but it was real and it was mine. That made it precious

I also began to love myself a kind of quiet fierce love that had nothing to do with approval. I realized that the question wasn’t “Why did he leave?” but rather, why did I ever think his leaving made me unworthy?

 

Today, I walk with a sense of peace. I’ve stopped trying to rewrite the past. My life is not a tragedy, it’s a testimony.  I ve learned that everything happens for a reason even pain. And sometimes the greatest lessons come wrapped in the hardest
moments.

I now understand that I am more than my scars.I  am more than someones
absence. I am more than enough. I am perfect not because I haven't been hurt but because I have learnt how to heal and that’s the power I carry with me every single day. ”Mwende” my mother once said-to me, “You don’t need to carry the pain to honour your story. You just need to live well.”

I live better now from closure from the past. I create meaning in the present. I work hard not to prove anything to anyone, but to make my mother proud, to become a reflection of the love she gave me. That night, that quiet fierce, beautiful love. It shaped me into who I am .

I am Mwende, I am a daughter, a dreamer, a beleiver.
I am a  hero not because I‘ve never fallen but because I have always risen.

And above all, I am worthy of love, of joy, of everything.