After a week of searching through community pages, obituaries, and social media groups, I found her: Anna Collins, late thirties, living just across town.
When I arrived at her address, I almost turned back. The house looked forgotten — paint peeling, windows shuttered, the yard overgrown. But when the door opened, I saw her. Pale, thin, eyes hollow with years of sorrow.
She hesitated. “Who’s asking?”
I held out the letter. “I found this — inside a pair of baby shoes.”
Her breath caught. She took the paper in shaking hands and sank against the doorframe. “I wrote this when I thought I couldn’t keep living,” she whispered.
Without thinking, I reached for her hand. “But you did. You’re still here. And that matters.”
Two Mothers, One Healing
Anna began to cry — the kind of crying that empties years of silence. I held her as she wept, and in that fragile moment, something shifted in both of us.
We became friends.
At first, she resisted my visits. “I don’t deserve kindness,” she’d say. But little by little, she began to talk — about her son Jacob, about the hospital days, the laughter, the bedtime stories. About how he used to call her “Supermom.”
I told her about Stan, about the exhaustion, the loneliness, the ex who walked out, and the endless fight to stay afloat.
And she did.
A New Beginning
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