Adena M'lynn's Voice

She didn’t know the exact moment her daughter stopped calling her “Mom.” There wasn’t a final word or dramatic exit. Just a slow, widening silence—measured in missed birthdays, unsent letters, and the cold weight of time. Estrangement doesn’t scream. It just stops speaking. Her daughter had been a college freshman the last time they spoke face to face. Old enough to know disappointment, too young to understand trauma. She had witnessed the arrests, the personality altering and swings, the shutdowns. She had watched her mother vanish into locked doors and reappear as someone more fragile, lost, and more broken than before. And when the silence started, it made a terrible kind of sense. Because what could she say? “I’m sorry I missed your school play, I was institutionalized.” “I didn’t forget your birthday—I was in prison.” “I love you, I just didn’t know how to be honest and to staying would cause more harm.” No Hallmark card could hold that much pain. No phone call could fix it. So in...

She never looked in mirrors for too long. Not because she hated her face—but because she didn’t recognize it. Some days it looked too old, other days too young. Some days she looked fat. And some days she was a boy. Sometimes the reflection felt like a stranger’s, like the glass had a glitch and showed someone else entirely. Touch was worse. Her skin was not skin—it was memory. A living, breathing battleground. Every inch had a story, and most of them were sexually violent. She never asked for her body to remember what her mind worked so hard to forget, but it did anyway—in the way she flinched at kindness, in the way she pulled away from lovers, in the way she could never fully relax even when she was safe. She grew up thinking her body was the enemy. That she was fat and ugly. That her butt was too big. Her breast were too small. She grew up being weighed each day and was shamed when gaining even a pound.  And when you believe that you are worthless, you learn to punish her....