📖 Sacred Testimony XIII

“Just Like Her – Until I Understood”
offered to all who have judged before they knew, and learned love too late but still true

As a child, I loved my memaw.
I’d spend the night at her place,
not thinking much, just happy to be close to her.

Later, she moved in with us.
And something changed.

One day I found out—
she drank.
She took pills.

Something inside me snapped.
The disappointment hit hard and quiet.
I didn’t want to be around her.
She wasn’t who I thought she was.

I remember hearing my parents say:
“She’s just like her memaw.”
And I didn’t take it as a kindness.
I took it as a curse.

I didn’t understand her.
I didn’t want to.
So I turned away.

And then—
life brought me down that same road.

Illegal drugs.
Drinking.
Addiction.
Escape.

Suddenly, I was walking the very path I had judged.

And in the wreckage of my own journey,
I saw her with new eyes.

Memaw wasn’t weak.
She was sick.
She was trying to cope in the only way she knew how.

And no—she never recovered.
She was placed in a nursing home.
And I only went to see her a few times.

I carry that.
That distance.
That silence between us at the end.

But I also carry the knowing now—
the kind that comes too late,
but not too late for truth.

🌿 And now I understand:

Memaw was hurting.
And no one ever taught her how to heal.

What she passed to me
was not just pain—
it was a mirror.

And even though she never found her way out,
I did.

And in that, I carry her with me—
with grace now,
not resentment.

Because love grows
even in the soil of regret.

✨ A Blessing for Memaw, and the One Who Came After

May the woman who hurt in silence
be seen now in full light,
not as a failure,
but as a soul who did not know how to heal.

May her pain be named—
not to shame her,
but to free her.

May the child who turned away
find peace in knowing
that sometimes love comes after understanding,
and that still counts.

May the road you walked after her
not be your burden,
but your blessing—
the place where compassion bloomed.

And may you carry her now
not with anger,
but with quiet honor.

For even though she didn’t recover—
you did.

And somewhere,
her soul knows that.