To Be Forgotten

We all want to be remembered.

Even if we do not think very highly of ourselves, we want someone to remember us. We want to be thought of, especially when we are not present. We want people to want us. We want people to miss us.

We think that if we are remembered that we are important.

There is a very natural response that we all take when we encounter this desire to be remembered. We decide what we think is the most important thing in the world, and we do everything we can to be a part of that important thing. 

Some of us will insert ourselves in to every community because we believe that communities are important. Some of us will do extensive humanitarian work because we know that there are people who are in need. Some of us will receive the highest degrees we can because we have faith that our knowledge is important. Some of us will make inventions to fix a problem because we know that every problem has a solution.

We do things.

People remember things. They remember the great works, the big ideas, the wonderful communities, everything we do can be remembered.

But there is a great danger in doing things to be remembered.

This is a common problem in science. Everyone knows what cancer does to people. Everyone knows what germs are. Everyone knows that certain drugs help with pain or lowering cholesterol or whatever ailment we have. Everyone knows that allergies suck. We know many big ideas in science.

We know that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.

But do we know the man who kept power in his house because he made this discovery?

Do we think about how no one believed the mitochondria mattered, so this man had to struggle to make enough money to make the discoveries and keep the lights on in the lab?

When we make our lives about what we do, we are not remembered; our works are remembered.

This is not a bad thing. Of course it is better to remember the good things brought in to the world, and of course it is good to praise the action more than the person. The thing is, if we want to be remembered, if we want to be considered as important, if we want to be wanted…

We have to be more than our stuff.

We have to see that there is more.

At the beginning of this post, I described what draws us to our “thing.” We identify something that we deem to be important, and then we do what we can to become a part of that important thing. Ultimately, we see how these little things matter. Not just to us, but to those around us.

We do what we deem to be important because we care about others.

However, somewhere down the line we stop caring about how we impact other people. We find the special thing that we can do, and we do everything in our power to be the most important person in that field, in that community, in that career, in everything we do. We figure that if we are needed in these important areas that people will remember us.

But there is a difference between being needed and being wanted.

To be wanted does not require perfection. To be wanted does not require excellence at every moment. To be wanted does not require things.

To be wanted requires love.

Unfortunately, we think that love requires things to be done. We live under the impression that if we do not do specific things that we cannot be loved. We think that we need to give people something so that they can give us love in return. For whatever reason, we believe that the things we do reveal our love.

Yes, we do need to do something, and yes we need to live life in order to love and be loved, but it is not what we do that determines if we are loved or not.

It is why we do what we do that defines our love.

Like I said, we do many things because we deem them as important. But do we ever think about why they are important? Do we make our actions personal? Do we consider how we personally fit in to what matters most in the world to us?

It is our why which gives us a passion.

Passion reveals who we truly are. It reveals what we value most. Whether it be the exact job we are doing, the community we join, the beliefs we hold, our passions, when fully revealed, are what drives people to love us, to want us.

Then, no matter what you do, it will always be important. It will always matter.

Dear Reader…you always matter, no matter what.

Now, when we see how much something matters to someone because of their passion and love for it, we are called to action. Love is not meant to keep us in place. Love is meant to be grown, to change our inner lives and our outer lives just the same. When someone is loved, the world changes.

So when someone reveals their very selves, which is a very risky task, we are called to be more than what we were before.

Sometimes that means you have to step out of your own spotlight for a while.

Some of my Dear Readers will remember my “Nobel Prize in Dreams” post. For those who do not, in this post I describe a project that held incredible importance to me. It was an experiment that described a huge gap in a Nobel Laureate lab’s work, and I had to spend nearly a year waiting for my advisor to give me the OK to perform this experiment.

I never explained why that project was so important to me.

My greatest experiment, the one that has inspired some of my favorite images and what I will some day hope to found my own lab off of, actually came from the hopes and dreams of my undergraduate.

From the moment I shared my papers with my student, I could tell that she cared a lot about one particular aspect of my project. It was something I was passionate about, but I knew that my advisor brought me in to our lab to do the mouse and fish work. Anything I did outside of that would be considered a “side project.”

It wasn’t a priority to my advisor, but it was a priority to my student.

My heart broke when my undergraduate shared how she felt after she created some of the most important mutations and the most important foundational experiments.

“It doesn’t matter Felicity,” she said, “I have so much data, and it looks right, but it doesn’t matter. No one will ever see it. No one will care.”

That night I sat down and started to outline what I needed to do to make the project move forward. I wrote out all of the reagents we had, and I wrote out every single piece of evidence we already had to support our work. Then, when I found any gaps, I started to pull papers from the 1970’s to the present to figure out everything I could. My undergraduate believed in this project, and she wanted to be able to contribute to our lab’s incredible efforts to cure Lysosome Storage Disorders.

Because my undergraduate was willing to share her passions, her hopes, and herself with me, I was called to action. I was called to love her as her mentor.

Sometimes I worked on what was considered low-priority more because I cared more about my undergraduate.

When we are called to love others, we have to be willing to give up our importance. We have to be willing to give up our own esteem for the sake of those around us. If it is in the workforce, you will likely have to take time to help a struggling co-worker achieve their goals. If it is in a group of friends, you will likely have to go outside of your comfort zone to help someone feel included. 

Regardless of the situation, when we are given the opportunity to love someone, we have to give up ourselves for their sake.

We have to forget ourselves.

At times this will seem completely insane. If we want to feel loved, if we want to be wanted, then why would we do anything that takes away from people knowing us? Why would we pursue the hopes of those around us if we do not have the same priorities? There could not be a benefit to doing something other than what is important to us. At least that’s what we tell ourselves.

By loving others through what matters to them, we show them that they matter.

And as they grow in love and confidence, they remember what you did for them.

They will love you.

People may not always remember what you did for them, but they will always remember that they were loved by someone. If we are willing to forget ourselves for others, then we allow them to be loved. Through love, our greatest deeds are forgotten, we are forgotten. However, the person we love will always know that they matter. They will walk with their head held high because they know that there is more to life than what we can control on our own.

Even if your lives should separate, they will remember you.

I have had many transient friends. In fact, there are still people who I run in to on a fairly regular basis that do not really remember me anymore. They know that I work on STARD9, and that is fine and good, but this one moment which happened a few weeks ago showed what people really remember about me.

I greeted some of these Facebook Friends I have in the ND community, and I walked away to hear this conversation.

“Who was that?”

“Felicity.”

“What does she do?”

“I don’t really know. I just know that she’s really happy and loves her undergrads.”

People can either remember you for the work you do, or for who you are. It is true; I am a happy person and I love my undergraduates. I have a passion for bringing light in to the lives of those around me. I have a passion for mentoring and fostering a community in my lab. These things drive me forward, and they make me who I am. That is what people remember. They do not remember my work, nor do they care.

But they are happier because they knew me.

What they don't know is that my undergraduate, who I spoke highly about, is the reason why I developed such a passion for mentoring.

When I was alone, heartbroken, and doubting my own skills, my undergraduate helped me find the strength I needed to work again. Because I believed in her, she believed in me too. She never let me give up, even when my experiments weren't working. I always knew that I could depend on my mentee.

She helped me become an integral part of our lab, and because of that, other undergraduates came to my aid as well. In fact, some who have already graduated are still supporting me in all of my efforts.

But I would not have any of this if it were not for my mentee's support for my own dream to run a lab someday.

Now some of my Dear Readers may be wondering what happened to my undergraduate’s precious project. It was actually a couple of weeks ago that the ending of this project came to fruition.

After completing our extensive project, I looked at my advisor, and I explained to him every single step that my undergraduate and I took to prove our hypothesis. Method after method, step after step, stat after stat, paper after paper, I went through them all so that he could hear just how much we did in virtual obscurity.

The next day my advisor went to the chemistry department to develop a drug based solely on my undergraduate’s model.

The day after that, my advisor stood in front our some of the most important people in our field and said, “And we are now working on a therapy that targets this activity directly.” He referenced the work inspired by my student.

When we are willing to take risks and allow others to be a part of that risk, amazing things can happen. It may seem like everything we do is unimportant. It may seem like we are forgotten. It may seem like nothing matters.

Everything has purpose.

You, Dear Reader, have a purpose, and you deserve to be loved for it.

Let’s go forward together.

Strength in Weakness

There are two ways that we view people: weak and strong.

We tend to find weakness in ourselves first.

The easiest place to describe such weakness is in our physical abilities. With the winter Olympics going on, it is very easy to look up at the screen and watch the athletes perform to their best ability and then look down at the couch and see our weakness. I can’t downhill ski, let alone stand negative windchill.

Some of us will decide that maybe if we just try a little harder that we too can be as strong as everyone around us. So we get to the gym, pick up a pair of dumbbells that are much smaller than the ones around us, and attempt to be better.

Then, as we struggle to stand beside the strong people beside us, we start to give up little by little…until the next Olympic Games wherein we feel like lazy slobs again.

This phenomenon does not just happen in the physical realm. We see people who are excelling in their careers, and we attempt to move forward before we even have a position open. We see people in stronger relationships than us, and we fumble around trying to find something that does not exist. 

We see the joy in others, and after trying everything within our visible grasp, we stop believing that we could be happy too.

However, there is a way for this doubt to be quelled: we get help.

Let’s go with an example from the physical realm. When a person hits a rut in their physical fitness, they either get a friend to help them find new ways to work out, or they can hire a personal trainer to improve their form. With the help of someone who is a little stronger than us, we gain knowledge that allows us to improve. The stronger person can see weaknesses to those who ask for their help, and with their support and experience, their trainee can become the person they were meant to be: healthy and happy.

However, finding weaknesses in others can come from two places. 

The first, with the physical trainer, is coming from belief. 

The second, which I will describe next, comes from doubt.

Sometimes, when we have failed in certain areas of our lives, we allow ourselves to remain in a state of doubt and sorrow. We give up on happiness, on joy rather, and our entire selves conform to this false conviction that we will never be happy. 

And if we cannot be happy, then there must be something fundamentally wrong with the people around us. No one could possibly be that happy.

“They must be faking it,” we tell ourselves

Suddenly the strength in others becomes a lie. With this lie in our hearts, we start to see our own strength as a great virtue. No way could my talents and my experiences and my emotions be fake! As we accept this false conviction, we tell ourselves that we must be better that everyone around us.

“I don’t need their strength. They need mine,” becomes our mantra.

And so we start to “look for problems” in other people.

My strength is joy. This joy has been in my heart for my entire life. Fueled by faith in Jesus Christ, I have no reason to be sad, at least not for a long time. I know that whatever happens to me that I will always be loved by my Father in Heaven and that I belong in any location.

I did not create my joy; it was a gift from God, and I cannot explain it beyond that point.

This joy draws people in. Whether they are happy already or if they are searching for joy in their lives, they come to me for a laugh and a smile. They do not stay for very long, but there is always an interesting soul or two in my life. Some come from faith and others have no knowledge of God’s love for them.

Regardless, I have always made friends through the joy God gave me.

But I still experience low moments.

When I was younger, like in high school and early college, I thought that my sorrow would go away if I “fixed” everyone’s problems. After all, the most tragic life stories filled my phone’s inbox every night, and people always said they felt better after talking to me. I figured that my joy would be complete if I made everyone else happy.

I got a rush just listening to people as they cried and told me their darkest secrets.

But I wasn’t happy.

No one had fun with me, and I did not understand why. If I could make people come to understand that they were wonderfully made and worth all of the love in the world, then why couldn’t I play with them or go to their parties or be around them in a simple scenario?

Thankfully I have an amazing “life trainer” aka “Mommy.” My mother knows that I can be a great friend because I love my siblings. Therefore, because she believed in my potential, she exposed my weakness.

“You’re exhausting Felicity,” my mom told me one day. I was confused; I didn’t really do anything other than talk to people.

My mother lovingly explained how it was difficult to talk to me because every conversation turned in to something deeper. Much like overworking a muscle to the point of injury, I forced people to find problems in their lives that may or may not exist. Because I wanted to make my joy “better,” I forced other people to lessen themselves.

I have better friendships than ever because my mom found my weakness in belief and not in doubt.

The question we have now is: how do I help those through belief and not in doubt? How do I overcome my own doubts in order to help others become the best-version-of-themselves?


My Dear Readers, you are well on your way. First, we have to accept our strengths. We are all gifted in one way or another, and we should celebrate that. Second, we have to acknowledge that we had to find and develop our strengths.

No strength came without a little effort.

Think of the Olympians; they are always practicing.


See your weaknesses, overcome them with those who are stronger than you, and then believe in others. Believe that even though someone else is weak that they too may be able to do what they dream to do. Believe in the strength in those in front of you, even if it means that you have to reveal your weaknesses.

My lab has done wonders to teach me the principle of "failing with style." Science fails all the time, but if we are open about our issues and troubleshoot as a community, then not only do we fix our problems, but we also help others avoid running in to the same pitfalls.

To have someone who is far more gifted than you ask for your help, even though you are still learning, is one of the greatest ways to show someone that you believe in them and that they will be successful some day.

When we show someone that we believe in them, they soar to the highest heights.

The best example I have of this happened last week with my new sophomores.

They are all incredibly gifted, and they are equally motivated to work. However, there is hestitation in some of their hearts. They do not want to fail, and they do not want me to see them struggling. Unbeknownst to them, I gave the team the hardest technique in our lab as their "training" experiment.

I had no clue if they were going to be able to perform the experiment, but I believed that with a little bit of encouragement that they could succeed. After all, my senior undergraduate got the hardest cloning project as her first project in the lab, and she came up with a novel signaling pathway because of it.

I believed in my little ones before they believed in themselves.

When it came time to image, one of the students sat at the microscope with shaky hands. I knew that she was the best read and most familiar with imaging out of the group, but the doubts in her mind were taking over. She kept looking at me over and over, asking if I could help her find the perfect cell.

I smiled, and instead of letting her doubts win, I told her that she had plenty of time and I patiently waited until she found a perfect cell to image.

However, even after I praised her work, she still seemed doubtful. Not wanting to give up on my student, I told her that that time-lapse movie would be used in a presentation that evening to all of the TA's and the professor. I told my student that I believed in her enough to risk scrutiny and personal failure.

My student's eyes lit up at the words, and she continued to work. She found several more cells to image, but it was not her immediate success that mattered. What mattered was what she did next.

My student stopped working, looked over at her teammate, and asked her if she would like to try.

The teammate had failed to take any images, and we were running out of time. Anyone else would have kept working. They would have doubted the teammate. However, because my student felt believed in, she wanted to instill that same feeling in her teammate's heart.

Together they completed the hardest technique in our lab.

Not because of their weaknesses, but in spite of them. Not because of their doubts, but belief in one another.

I could not have been more proud of my team.

We need to believe in others, and we need to be patient with them. They will come to us in their weakness, but only if we believe in their strengths. No one wants to be pitied. By believing in the joy of others, in the potential of others, the talents of others, we can grow in courage, and we can help one another defeat our greatest weaknesses.

So stop trying to find weaknesses in others.

Find strengths and believe in them.

Rejection

This past January, I wrote my Love Life Story. It was a novella which describes every single guy I ever had a crush on or a relationship with. I wrote it as a response to my second 54 Day Rosary Novena that I prayed for God to bring my future husband in to my life. 

Now there are many beautiful nuggets of wisdom in this story, but I would like to focus on one in particular, something that has changed how I live my life.

Why am I always rejected?

Rejection is a big part of our lives. Whether you are single or not, you will always face some sort of rejection. Someone else will win the lottery. Someone else will get the treatment as you take the placebo. Someone else will get the job. Someone else will be where we want to be.

We see a life that we want to be a part of, and yet something in the world takes away from that one desire.

My single prayer to God for myself is for my future family to finally be here on Earth. I never ask God for my experiments to work. I never ask Him to take away my colds, my migraines, my failures…nothing. As pathetic as it may sound, I have never asked God for anything else.

Sure, I prayed for my friends, my family, and my peers.

But my family is the only thing I've asked for myself.

I do not want to be in a relationship for the feelings, but rather so that I may some day be able to build a family of witnesses like my parents have done for all of Team Newton. I have seen what my family has done for the Church, and it is my single greatest desire to be a part of that mission.

And yet…

God has yet to allow me to partake in that single grace.

We all have a great desire in our hearts. Whether you are waiting for a relationship like me, or you are waiting for your purpose in life to be made clear to you, or you are trying to fix a problem, or you are experiencing a chronic ailment, there is something in your life Dear Reader, that you are waiting on. 

It seems like we are all being rejected. It feels like the God of the universe has failed us, and it feels like our prayers are a waste of time.

However, it is the reason behind our rejections that makes our lives all the more meaningful.

When I got older, God granted me the opportunity to meet some amazing young men. Some of them were Catholic, others were Christian, still others had lost their faith due to the many tragedies of the world. Whatever their status, these men challenged me to be a better person. They accepted me in my hard times, and they encouraged my abnormal passion for biological research and teaching.

Some of these young men became romantic relationships, but the majority of them became my best friend.

They all left though.

Being the abnormally confident person I am, I would ask them to explain to me why they did not want to be with me romantically. This would trouble them greatly, even when I assured them at great length that I did not care about their answer, nor did I care if they answered in the first place. All I wanted to know was why they did not love me.

From the first up to the last, they all gave a variation on the same answer. However, it was the first one to answer my question that changed my life.

It was one of my best friends. It was fairly late at night during my junior year of college, and I asked him a year after he rejected me why he did not want to be with me. He looked forward, and I could tell that it was very difficult for him to answer, even though he had never had a problem telling me what I could do to improve myself.

“It’s not that I don’t love you Felicity. I love everything about you. You are one of the most amazing people I know, and if there was a problem with you, then I probably would not be your friend. Felicity, I wish I could love you like that. I do not understand why I cannot. I love everything about you; you’re my best friend.”

When I tell people this story, they clutch their hearts and smile. They hear the truth in my friend’s statement.

Love is not defined by our imperfections. When we are rejected, it is not because there is something inherently wrong with who we are. It is not because there is nothing lovable within our hearts.

But this does not answer the question: Why won’t you love me?

The first time I heard this “I love everything about you, but I cannot understand why we cannot be together” statement gave me hope that there would be another soul who would love me. I figured that this was simply God telling my college best friend that I was not the right one for him, but there would be someone great for me in the future.

And still I hold on to that foolish hope that God will some day end my waiting person.

We all hold on to some hope. We all believe that our suffering will end. Even if it is petty as my desire to be a mother some day, or if it is serious as the desire for an illness to end, there is something in our hearts that we cannot let go of.

God is in those dreams, in our hopes, and in our greatest desires.

He resides there, speaking to us in our trials, telling us what it is that we need to do in order to find the life that He has created for us. He knows how to bring us to the life we need, but we do not know how to take that path.

And yet…we reject Him, the One who can lead us Home.

My second 54 Day Rosary Novena did not pan out the way I expected. The day after I finished the Novena, I read over my Love Life Story, desperate to find what I had been missing all along. After all, the first time I prayed this Novena, I found a way to love souls who have made my scientific work all the greater.

I came across another rejection, and I realized that it was much more than a rejection from a boy to me.

These were the same words I used to reject the man who had loved me most.

Let me set the stage. Picture a young man sitting with a young woman. It’s another late night, and the young woman has to make a decision. The man has just told her how much he loves her, and all she has to do is say, “I love you too.”

Instead, she says this:

“I do not know why I do not love you. You have done nothing wrong. You couldn’t have done anything wrong. Jesus, you are perfect. You are the most holy person I know, and You are incredibly kind. You take on so many of our struggles, and You ask for nothing in return. I feel inadequate just knowing how much You have done for me. I wish I could say something, but I do not know what is keeping me from loving You.”

All Jesus wants is for us to love Him back. He carries our crosses, and He smiles at us through the blood dripping down from His Crown of Thorns. He never hurts us, and yet we all decide to choose a life for ourselves.

But why?

We claim not to know why, but  the answer is actually embedded in our confusion.

When it comes to the love of God, we feel inadequate in its presence. We see how perfect He is, and we see how heavy His Cross is, and we decide that we are too weak, that we are too small, that we are too imperfect to love Him back. We do not deserve His love. We do not deserve the life that He has made for us.

We reject Jesus’ love every day because we think our lives should be the way we want it to be.

But what if we said, “I love you too Jesus?”

108 days of my life were dedicated in prayer to the one God made for me. However, if I am not living the life that God made for me, then I would not be able to meet him. In fact, my future family does not exist without God’s love. My entire dream is to create a family like my parents did. God is at the center of our family, and it is His love that makes our lives and mission possible.

But those 108 days were not a waste.

People will tell me that they were, but I know in my heart that they were not.

Those 108 days of deep prayer, these 23.75 years of single-hood, these 6 years as a confirmed Catholic, the 50 men described in my Love Life Story, they are all important. They all taught me how to love. They all showed me that God was there in every moment, constantly whispering of His love and devotion to me.

All I have to do is turn around and say, “I love you too Jesus.”

So I did. It was a Sunday morning, and I praying over the names in my Love Life Story. So many beautiful souls, all carrying God’s love for me in their hearts- I was overwhelmed. I sobbed through Communion. It was almost too difficult for me to look in to the eyes of my Short Course Team members’ faces as they handed me the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

For it was in their hands that I was able to tell Jesus that I loved Him too.

Many more tears fell, but they were not sorrowful. My tears were filled with love for Jesus and His little ones, the souls He gave me.

When we give our entire lives to Christ, when we tell Him that we love Him in our suffering, He bestows many blessings upon us. It is difficult, yes, but it is the most rewarding experience. Do I still desire for God to grant my single grace? Certainly.

But now I know that my life is more than my dreams.

My life is His Dream.

Ever since that Sunday, I have felt more joy in my heart and purpose in my spirit than I have felt in a long time. I smile at those who hate me. I speak of my faith to my advisor who once knew the Catholic faith. I do not fear rejection because I already have the greatest love in Heaven or on Earth in my heart.

I know that by loving Jesus and all of the souls He grants me the opportunity to meet that I will some day live the life that God revealed to me six years ago in the Frassati House Chapel.

I used to not notice when people smiled at me. I used to think that people did not remember me or see me. However, since turning my heart to Jesus and not some mystery man in the distant future, I have noticed more men smiling at me than ever before. Not in lust, but in genuine care for me. I have noticed more children coming up to me in churches and stores.


When we love Jesus, He challenges us to find the life we are made for. Just like any great relationship, it makes us in to the best-version-of-ourselves.

My life, although it is not particularly different since that morning, is more real than it has been in quite some time.

And I feel beautiful because of that.

The next chance you look in the mirror, I invite you to do this one thing: look in to your eyes, the eyes that God gave you, and say, “I love you too Jesus.”

It will change your life.

I Miss You

Dearly Beloved,

I miss you.

It’s funny; I hardly know you, and yet your absence is the only thing I notice anymore.

There are other members of my family who claim that you used to come to dinner for the holidays. Even in the large crowds filling my home on Christmas, all I can see is the empty space you should fill. Some other members of my family say that you used to be at dinner more often, but then you got sick and stopped coming.

Most people think you never really existed, let alone that you could come to dinner ever again.

I know that you are real my love. I see you.

I see you in the smiles you give me when I am crying. I see you in the way you tend to those less fortunate than you. I see you in your great accomplishments. I hear you in the laughter which comes after the tears. I hear you in the encouragement you give to the littlest of souls. I hear your joy radiating outwards.

You touch my heart every day, and yet you do not even know that I love you.

My family friends saw you once. You went to dinner with them a few times, but the food did not settle well. Then, as you tried to reconcile your apetite with your new family, they discovered your sickness. They saw that you would not live long in their home, and so they threw you out. They left you out in the cold with nothing to eat or drink.

You walk past my home often, and each time I see you, my heart breaks. The eyes which once danced with hope are now darkened by the everlasting thirst on your lips. The body which once moved freely is now hunched over due to the hunger pains.

If I could feed you, I would.

If I could give you something to drink, I would.

But I can’t.

You see, my love, I am too weak to interact with someone who is as sick as you. That is what they tell me at least. They say that I will not be able to fight off the infection, let alone draw close enough to you in the cold to give you something to drink. I wish it weren’t true, but I have experienced this illness before.

No one wants to risk losing me for your sake.

There are times when I am just barely strong enough to go outside and encounter you. I dance down the city streets, completely unaware of the threat. The memory of my childhood illness disappeared. I am fearless, and I am more like myself than I ever before. My heart is at its greatest rest at home, but when I am outside, amongst the outsiders, I am alive.

I got to know you outside of my home.

We never sat beside one another at the dinner table, and yet I knew you had a place there. I knew in my heart that my seat belonged next to your’s. How could such little pieces of joy not belong next to the immature little girl who wanted nothing more than to smile at every meal and sing joyful songs with the ones she loved?

Your love, while broken, is beautiful.

Your sickness, while tragic, should never keep you out.

I met you, and I loved you. Your weakness did not scare me, because I too share in that weakness. I too doubt and fear and wonder. I too want the greatest accomplishments and talent. I too wish for more than I deserve. If anything, all I wanted in the world was to know how you learned what love looked like when you did not have a home wherein your heart could rest.

My hand went out, along with my heart, and you did not take it.

My voice went out, along with my life, and you did not want it.

When I return home from my little trips, my family looks upon me with pity. They know that I want to do so many things, but I cannot do them without you here. They know that I want to love and be loved, but I cannot force you to feel loved. They know that I miss you, but they do not want to meet you again.

The only ones who remember you are Mother and Father.

Mother calls me every day, and she reminds me to pray for you. She tells me that even though my brothers and sisters have cast you out, even though you never sat at our dinner table, even though you are sick, that you are worth so much more than you know. She tells me that Father loves you.

Father is a doctor. When I went out of the house for a long time and caught the terrible illness, it was Father who cured me. He knows that you and I have the same condition, so I am often told to pray for you.

With every prayer I love you more.

With every prayer I miss you more.

Each day, I sit at the dinner table in a long wooden seat in a dimly lit room. There are many rows of these wooden seats, and they all face one table. My brothers and sisters file in to their desired seats, not standing too close for fear of causing discomfort to one another. We exchange soft smiles and a gentle word or two, and then we begin our little ritual.

There is music and story-telling and jokes and laughter and tears. There is joy throughout the room.

In our joy, we miss the tragedy surrounding us.

We sit as islands of reverence in a sea of silent cries for help. Occasionally another island meets our shores, and we attempt to bridge these gaps together. I am part of an archipelago, the Newton Archipelago. It is beautiful, and it floats in a tight circle. 

There are many islands that pop up beside us, but there are many times that these islands disappear due to the storm around us.

No joy can distract me from the silence beside me.

You were supposed to be here, holding my hand. You were supposed to be here, giving me a hug of peace. You were supposed to be here, singing along to the simplest of tunes. You were supposed to be here, teaching me how to love.

But you are not here.

You, the one who believed that love could be real but lost it because of the cruelties of this world, are not here anymore. You, my family, are not here.

“Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life.”

My eyes fill with bitter tears. Had I gone truly in peace, would you have taken my hand? Had I been filled with love instead of fear, would you have believed my story? If I truly glorified Our Father, would you have been healed of the illness we share?

My beloved, I wish I could have been a greater daughter. I wish I could have been stronger, but I was never strong enough to help you. Beloved, you are so incredibly loved. Mother never lets me forget you, and she helps me find you on the city streets. She guides me by the hand, and she helps me learn how to play with you. Then, as we play, Father comes to watch over us. We are safe when Father is there, but we do not notice the loving gaze.

But you can see me.

And I can see you.

And I love you.

Please, my beloved, will you come home with me?

Felicity