Writers 
My darling children,
By the time you read this, you will likely be old enough to understand things I could not explain to you when you were small. I am writing this from a hospital bed, and the doctor has told me that my time may be shorter than I hoped. I do not know if I will be here to see you grow into the men and woman I always dreamed you would become. So I am leaving this letter instead, to be given to you when you are old enough to hold its weight.
I need to tell you the truth about our home, because one day you may ask why I stayed for so long.
Your father was not always a gentle man to me. I do not say this so you will hate him. He is still your father, and there is a part of him that loved us in his own way. But there was another part of him I could not reach, a part that turned into something I was afraid of behind closed doors.
I stayed for a long time, longer than I should have, because of the three of you. I told myself a home needed a mother and a father, whatever the cost of keeping it that way. I believed if I endured quietly, you would grow up whole, untouched by what happened between us at night when your doors were closed and you were meant to be asleep.
I was wrong. Children see more than we know. I understand that now.
That night, the violence went further than it ever had before, and I woke up in this hospital bed. I thought of all three of you before anything else. Not myself. Not even your father. I thought about who would plait your hair in the mornings. Who would check your school bags. Who would tell you it was safe to speak up when something felt wrong.
The doctor has told me my body may not fully recover from what happened that night. I am writing this letter in the quiet hours, when the pain allows me a little peace, because there are things I need you to carry with you long after I am gone.
Please do not let what happened to me convince you that love is supposed to hurt. Love does not leave bruises. Love does not make you afraid to come home. If anyone, ever, makes you feel the way I sometimes felt in our house, I want you to leave. I want you to tell someone. Do not wait as long as I did.
To my first son, you were always the one who noticed everything. I remember you standing by the kitchen door more than once, quiet, watching. I am sorry you saw what you saw. Please forgive me for not protecting you from it sooner. Be a different kind of man than the one you watched. Be the kind whose hands only build, never break.
To my second child, my strong, stubborn one, I always admired how loudly you loved. Do not let this house teach you to make yourself small. Take up space. Ask for what you deserve, in love and in life.
To my last born, my baby, you may not remember much of this time at all, and maybe that is a mercy. Ask your siblings, when you are ready. Let them tell you who I was, beyond the woman in this letter.
I do not know how many of my days remain. But I want you to know that even in the hardest years, you three were the reason I kept getting up every single morning. You were never the burden that kept me trapped. You were the reason I found the strength to survive as long as I did.
If I am not there for your graduations, your weddings, the ordinary Tuesdays when you simply need your mother, please know I wanted to be. I wanted all of it. Every single mundane, beautiful piece of your lives.
Take care of each other. Be gentler with the world than the world was with me.
All my love, always,
Mummy