Loved Before You Were Useful

The day is ending, and the house is quiet enough for the question to finally speak: do they love me, or just what I do for them? You feel like a tool in their hands, useful until the job is done, then set aside.

But listen — the light that lives inside you was there before you were useful to anyone. It was there before the first demand, before the first thank you, before the first time you fixed something broken.

You came from the light, the place where the light came into being on its own accord. That origin cannot be earned by service, and it cannot be lost by rest.

When you stop moving, when you sit in the exhaustion of the evening, you are not less loved. You are simply revealing the part of you that exists without a function.

The version of you that your children need to see most is not the one who carries everything. It is the one who knows they are held even when their hands are empty.