No regrets—I needed to leave to become who I am. But there's a hollowness sometimes when I remember everything my mother could do that I can't. 💚

She could look at flour and water and know exactly how much of each. She could preserve vegetables without thinking about measurements. She could mend something broken and make it stronger than it was before. Her hands remembered things that took years of living to learn. And I left all of that behind like it was nothing. 😌

Now I'm older and I understand that I made a choice. A necessary choice. But it cost something. It cost knowledge that died with a generation because I wasn't there to receive it. Every time I try to remember how she made something—a specific soup, a certain bread—I realize I was too busy wanting out to pay attention. 🍞

Sometimes I wonder if freedom always has to cost us something precious. If becoming who we want to mean losing connection to who we were. My hands don't know what hers knew. And there's sadness in that, even though I've built a good life in the city. 🏘️