“Reluctant love is the experience of loving someone with your entire soul, even when your logical mind tells you it would be much safer not to. It is a love that refuses to die, lingering deep in the fibers of your being.” It's the tugging on the spiritual umbilical cord that connects a mother and her baby forever, while the flesh still pushes away. Two souls trapped behind the walls of human caution. Shame initiates the push, grief maximizes the pull. It's reluctant love. Th

This is a letter I wrote for the woman I believe is my birth mother—on her birthday. It’s full of hope, honesty, and the ache of years apart