The Prayer I Forgot I Prayed
A Narcissistic Mother, a Daughter, and the Freedom of Forgiveness.
Some lessons don’t arrive as lightning bolts.
Sometimes they come as a bird sitting quietly beside the road.
It was an ordinary morning, much like the countless mornings I had spent in prayer and meditation. Outwardly, my life was full. Inwardly, there was one place that still ached.
I hadn’t spoken to my mother in nearly six years.
I won’t go deeply into the reasons here. If you have experience with or have researched narcissistic mothers, you may understand the complicated grief that comes with loving someone who was never emotionally able to love you in the way you needed.
After my father died in 2013, I slowly began creating distance. Throughout my life, I had tried over and over to build a relationship with her, but it was almost always one-sided and emotionally exhausting.
Eventually, I stopped trying.
She didn’t ask me to come back. There were no tearful phone calls or heartfelt letters. The only thing she sent was a package containing every photograph she had of me, along with childhood cards and letters I’d written over the years.
I decided to go through the box and one letter took my breath away.
When I was 15 I had run away and told her I was living with a friend.
This was the note she left for me.
Even after all those years, holding that letter in my hands hurt.
By 2022, my life looked very different. I was in a loving relationship, helping raise two wonderful children, running a restaurant, growing my massage practice, and caring for our little hobby farm.
Life was genuinely beautiful.
Yet I found myself thinking about my mother - not because I expected her to be different, but because I wished to share my joy with her.
Logically, I knew nothing had changed. She had once told me, when I was still a child, that she had already learned everything she needed to know and didn’t need to learn anything else. Even then, that puzzled me. I’ve always believed that learning is one of life’s greatest gifts.
Still, my heart remained unsettled.
So I brought it to God.
I prayed. I asked for guidance, then made a simple request.
“If reaching out to my mother is the right thing to do, let me see a bluebird.”
Not anything extraordinary.
Not a two headed bluebird.
Just a bluebird.
A blue jay would even count.
Then I let it go.
Months passed.
I completely forgot about the prayer.
Then one afternoon, while driving down our quiet road, I saw the most beautiful bluebird sitting near the shoulder.
“Oh,” I thought. “What a beautiful bluebird.”
Then immediately...
“FUCK.”
I remembered.
In that instant, I felt something deeper than surprise—a quiet sense that the universe was looking out for me, supporting me, and loving me in a way I could finally recognize.
I realized I had arrived at a crossroads.
In that moment, I had a choice.
I could ignore what I had asked for because I have free will.
Or I could be the kind of woman who practices what she preaches.
When I got home, I lay on my stomach with my notebook and wrote.
I told my mother about the bluebird.
I apologized for every way I had ever hurt her.
I forgave her for every way she had hurt me.
Then I typed the letter into an email and pressed Send.
What follows is the actual email I sent that day.
Several days later, her reply arrived.
Before opening it, I already knew there was a good chance it wouldn’t contain the words I had longed to hear.
I released all expectations.
This was her response.
I read it slowly.
Then I read it again.
Years earlier, her response or lack there of would have hurt me.
This time, it didn’t.
Because I wasn’t waiting for her to change anymore.
The miracle wasn’t that my mother transformed.
The miracle was that I had.
For the first time, forgiveness wasn’t something I was offering in exchange for accountability.
It wasn’t permission.
It wasn’t reconciliation.
It wasn’t pretending the past hadn’t happened.
It was freedom.
I understood that love is the forgiveness we give ourselves.
My mother’s story didn’t begin with her.
She carried wounds from her own childhood, just as her mother likely carried wounds before her. Pain often travels quietly through generations until someone decides it will travel no farther.
I wanted that someone to be me.
Not only for myself.
But for my daughter.
I wanted her to inherit something different.
Not another generation of silence, resentment, or emotional abuse.
I wanted her to inherit compassion.
Boundaries.
Peace.
Today, my mother and I have a relationship.
It isn’t the relationship I once dreamed of, and that’s okay.
She now lives with mild dementia, though she still manages her life well. I call her several times each week, and we see each other from time to time.
Most of our conversations are ordinary.
We talk about the weather.
The birds.
Groundhogs wandering through the yard.
The squirrels stealing from the bird feeder.
Sometimes that’s all a relationship needs to be.
When conversations become hurtful or overly negative, I gently end them.
Then I let it go.
No hard feelings, no resentment.
Because I finally understand something.
Loving yourself makes you safe.
Forgiveness does not eliminate boundaries.
Peace does not depend on another person’s healing.
It depends on our own.
I am peaceful now.
By forgiving my mother, I learned the meaning of unconditional love.