My mother will never truly know what it was like to be her child.

It was a typical Sunday in Mexico City during the 1970s, a time when families would simply pile into their cars and head out to visit relatives without the need for a call or prior notice; you just arrived and spent the day together. I must have been around four or five years old. I can still picture myself in the back seat of my father’s white Datsun 1600/510 sedan as we cruised through Chapultepec Park, one of the oldest and largest urban parks in the world.

But my memory doesn’t begin with the park. It starts with the way I looked at my mother, seated next to my father in the passenger seat. Her face, turned toward the window, bore a frown that hinted at unease. Her eyes scanned the park with an uncomfortable urgency, as if searching for something unseen....

That morning, we had spent time driving around, visiting several of my father’s siblings. Yet, strangely, each one had something going on, an excuse that meant we couldn’t stay. It was odd, this series of polite rejections one after the other, and though I didn’t fully understand what was happening, I sensed something wasn’t right. My mother, however, seemed to know. She always had a way of knowing when things were off. So she made my father drive us to Chapultepec Park. I remember her expression, that quiet determination masking a suspicion she likely didn’t want to voice.

Then, she spoke: “There they are.”

Through the car window, I caught sight of a gathering in the distance, a bright and lively birthday party. As we drove closer, I recognized the faces. It was my father’s entire family, the same aunts and uncles who had told us they were busy with other plans. The smiles on their faces now felt like a betrayal, celebrating one of my cousins birthday's without us. In that moment, a sinking realization washed over me: we hadn’t been invited. I glanced at my mother, her face strained with tension and barely contained anger.

She tried to hide it, but by then, I had become adept at reading her, always scanning for any sign of unhappiness. I didn’t fully grasp the depth of her emotions, but I felt their weight, heavy and unsettling.

The story I would later be told was that it was because of me, my boundless energy, my insatiable curiosity; that was why we had been left out. That day, I realized I couldn’t be the lively child I naturally was. Instead, I needed to make myself small, to quiet the parts of me that felt too much, too big, too overwhelming for others.

It’s only now, as an adult, that I’ve started to question this narrative. Was it truly me, the little girl who was so full of life, or was it something deeper between my mother and my father’s family? Could it be that my mother, who often seemed to carry an invisible wound of not feeling welcome, had somehow caused this distance?

These are questions I never could have asked back then, but as I sift through my memories, I find myself exploring them with a deeper compassion for both my younger self and for my mother.

As a child, I internalized the guilt. I felt responsible, as though my very existence, my spirit, my joy, my curiosity, was too much. I thought I was the reason we weren’t included. That kind of self-blame takes root deeply. It stays with you, shaping how you see yourself, even in the smallest ways. I grew up learning to make myself smaller, to be less of a troublemaker, to not be the cause of discomfort. It’s only now, as I step into my own healing, that I recognize how much of that burden was never mine to carry.

My mother will never truly understand what it felt like to navigate the world as her child, to learn how to walk on eggshells so as not to upset her delicate emotional balance, and to carry the weight of unspoken tension between her and others. But she too was wounded, moving through her own pain, grappling with her own feelings of not belonging. And though that pain was passed down to me in ways neither of us could see at the time, I can now hold space for the complexity of it all.

I can extend compassion to the little girl I was, knowing that she did the best she could with the emotional tools she had. I can also extend compassion to my mother, who was likely doing the same. The healing of this wound doesn’t come from assigning blame, but from understanding the threads of hurt that have been passed down and choosing to untangle them, to set myself free from the guilt and responsibility that was never truly mine.

In my journey, I’ve come to realize that being an empath, a deeply sensitive person, was born out of necessity. I had to learn to read the room, to scan faces for any flicker of emotion, to anticipate what might happen next. But now, I see that this sensitivity is also a gift, a strength that allows me to connect with others on a deep level, to offer the kind of understanding I once craved.

The mother wound is a complex, deeply ingrained part of who I am, but it does not define me. Healing means stepping into the truth of my own worth, embracing the fullness of who I am, and allowing myself to exist freely, without fear of being too much. It means giving myself permission to let go of the guilt that was never mine to carry, to rewrite the narrative I was handed as a child.

And as I continue on this path, I know that healing is not a straight line; it’s a spiral. There are days when I still feel the weight of old stories, but I remind myself that I have the power to change them. I can hold space for my past while choosing a new way forward, one that honors both the little girl I was and the woman I am becoming.

My mother may never fully understand what it was like to be her child, but I am learning to understand, and in that understanding, I find my own healing.