I came back to Philly from Atlanta in the summer of 2023, depressed. Not because anything bad had happened — but because coming home didn't look like what God said was next. I had expectations. I had plans. And none of them looked like this.

But within three weeks of being back, I watched God use me to help others heal while I was still trying to tend to my own wounds. It wasn't planned — me coming home. But it was needed. And I'm learning that those two things are often the same.

While I was in Atlanta, I had been doing deep work in therapy. And somewhere in the middle of that work, I learned something that cracked me open: you find out if you're actually healed when you're confronted with the same situation that sent you to therapy in the first place.

Coming home was that confrontation.

And what I found was a little girl who still needed tending to. Grieving her felt like dying. But I had to let her go — without her own version of healing, for now — because the grown woman was here. And she could handle what the little girl couldn't.

That grief was real. It was necessary. And it was holy.

Then Mother's Day 2024 happened.

My mother handed me a card. I have no children. And something shifted in me in that moment — because I realized I had a choice. I could embrace what she was saying. Or I could try to force her to see what I had always needed.

I chose to receive it.

What made that possible is that our relationship had already been growing — slowly, powerfully — over the years. My mom has always been my best friend, even in the seasons when I was quietly nursing my wounds. But that card moved things to a different level. A deeper one.

She's noticed the change in me. She's said so. She's told me I've taught her things. And we've had the kinds of conversations I used to wonder if we'd ever be able to have. That's where the Mother's Day cards — two years running now — come from.

Then a clip of Dr. Sarita Lyons at Jackie Hill Perry's "Glory" conference in 2023 hit my timeline, and what Dr. Sarita said wrecked me in the best way: that while you're healing, "God can use you to meet your mother and minister to her in a way you didn't think you'd be available to because of your pain."

I felt that in my bones.

Because that's exactly what happened. I didn't set out to give my mother wise counsel. I didn't plan to become someone she learned from. But healing changed what I had to offer — and it changed the way I offered it. Not from frustration. Not from why am I the one doing this. From a place of something that finally felt like freedom.

That's why I am so anticipating Dr. Sarita's new book, Honor Thy Mother: How to Grieve, Heal, and Make Peace with Your Mother Wounds (August 2026, WaterBrook Multnomah).

This book is for the woman who's still healing. The complicated one. The one who loves her mother and grieves her at the same time.

It's for me. And I have a feeling it's for you too.

📖 Pre-order the book here. Save this post and share it with someone who needs it.

Ya Girl in Wholeness,

Mya Kay