I Heard “Mom” and My Whole Body Tensed

Dear Delyara, My daughter called me from upstairs, and before love got there, before tenderness, before my actual heart had a chance to answer, my body went straight to tension. Not because I don’t love her. Because I was already carrying too much. That’s the part nobody says out loud. Sometimes motherhood lands in the body as pressure before it lands as devotion. Then the guilt arrives so fast you can barely sort one feeling from the other. I answered her sweetly enough. She never knew. But I knew. And I’ve been carrying that moment around with me all day.