PeonyMagazine

  Special Issue • September 2025: Letters in Autumn (Part 1 of 4) Dear Autumn, Whenever you arrive with your soft breeze and golden skies, I feel a sense of calm. You remind me that life moves in seasons, that nothing stays the same forever. And maybe that is why I feel so close to you now, because my life as a mother feels like it has shifted into its own  autumn. I still remember the early years, when my children were small and everything felt like spring, new, fragile, and blooming all at once. Those mornings are noisy and full of life, like the first buds pushing through the soil. I remember the mess, shoes by the floor, toys scattered on the floor, lunchboxes that I tried to fill with love even when I was too tired to stand. I waited by the window in the afternoons, just to catch a glimpse of their faces running home to me. And at night, I sat beside them doing their homework, I barely understood, pretending I wasn’t just as exhausted as they were. It was chaos, but it wa...

  Motherhood may change everything, but it shouldn’t erase you. A heart-to-heart on staying connected to your identity, passions, and peace while raising a family in a world that keeps asking for more. My mom didn’t plan to be a single mother in her 40s, just two months after giving birth to my youngest sister. No woman does.  But life doesn’t wait for your permission to change. Sometimes, it just drops the plot twist like a TV show you weren’t ready to binge-watch. I was 14. Old enough to understand when things shifted, but too young to process the gravity of it all. My dad—who had been the pillar of our home, the financial engine, the man with all the answers—died. And just like that, our family flipped inside out. My mom, who’d built her life around him, became the captain of a ship in the middle of a storm she didn’t ask to sail. And let me tell you… she had no map, no compass—just a newborn in her arms and two kids watching her every move.  She was born to be someone...