I spent nineteen thousand dollars on my son’s wedding, every cent I had saved across decades of careful living, believing I was giving him one final, unquestionable proof of love. I told myself it was worth it, that money could always be replaced but moments could not. Yet as I sat there that night, surrounded by crystal glasses, linen tablecloths, and strangers who barely knew my name, I realized I had not purchased gratitude or respect. I had purchased my own erasure. My name is Stephanie. I am seventy years old, and I have been a mother for forty-five of those years in the most literal, exhausting, and devoted sense of the word. I adopted Ethan when he was five, after a social worker brought him to my small apartment with a trash bag full of clothes and eyes that flinched at every sound. He cried for parents who would never come back, and I held him through nights of terror, sickness, and grief until his sobs softened into sleep. I worked double shifts in a factory, came home with aching hands, and still helped with homework and scraped knees. I never remarried, not because I could not, but because every ounce of energy went into giving him stability. I sacrificed comfort, travel, dreams, and savings without resentment, because loving him was the most important thing I would ever do. And yet, in one sentence spoken into a microphone, he made it clear that none of that mattered anymore. Continue reading…
