Gone to Find Myself: A Letter from California

“Mommy, where are you going?”

Emma’s tiny voice pierced through the gray morning, her arms around my knees as I stood by the door, suitcase in hand. My husband, Michael, hovered a few steps behind her, eyes bloodshot, jaw clenched. I kept my back straight, but inside, I was rusted through, hollowed out by years of running on empty. I knelt, my hands shaking as I brushed Emma’s hair from her forehead. “I need to go away for a while, honey,” I whispered. My son, Jacob, stood in the hallway, silent, his favorite dinosaur clutched in his fist.

Michael’s voice was a low growl. “Sarah, you can’t just walk out. You’re their mother.”

I wanted to scream. Wanted to tell him how I’d spent years as a ghost in this house, how I’d forgotten what my own laughter sounded like, how I’d wake up in the middle of the night gasping, certain that I was suffocating under the weight of everyone else’s needs. But all that came out was, “I’m sorry. I have to do this.”

I drove for three days straight, through the endless cornfields of Indiana, the red dust of Arizona, the shimmering mirage of Nevada, until the California sun washed over me like absolution. I rented a room in a shared house in Santa Cruz, a half-renovated Victorian with chipping blue paint and a porch that creaked when you walked on it. The woman who owned the place, Linda, was a retired nurse with a gentle laugh and a rescue pitbull named Daisy. She didn’t ask questions when I arrived on her doorstep, shoulders slumped, eyes swollen from crying.

At night, lying on the lumpy mattress, I composed letters in my head to Emma and Jacob. Sometimes I wrote them down; sometimes I just let the words drift away, like leaves in the Pacific breeze. “I’m sorry,” I wrote. “I love you. I hope one day you’ll understand.”

But the guilt was a tide that never receded. Every time my phone buzzed with a text from Michael—“Emma had a fever, she asked for you” or “Jacob wouldn’t eat dinner”—it was like a punch to the gut. I’d stare at the screen, fingers hovering, unable to reply. What could I say? That I missed them so much it felt like my chest was caving in? That I was terrified I’d ruined their lives?

Linda would find me sometimes, hunched over the kitchen table clutching a mug of cold coffee. “You can’t pour from an empty cup, Sarah,” she’d say, her voice gentle but firm. “You did what you had to do.”

But did I? Or was I just selfish? Running away because I couldn’t hack it? My mother called once a week, her Ohio drawl sharp as ever. “You know what people are saying?” she’d hiss. “You abandoned your kids. Michael’s mother moved in to help. She says you’re unstable.” I’d bite my lip to keep from yelling, “Then why didn’t you ever help me?”

Sometimes I walked for hours along the cliffs, the wind tangling my hair, the ocean stretching out forever. I’d watch the surfers paddle out, fearless, while I stayed rooted on the edge. I envied their courage. I’d spent my whole life being good—good daughter, good wife, good mother—until I cracked open.

One afternoon, Linda knocked on my door. “There’s a women’s circle tonight. Come with me.” I wanted to say no, to stay curled up with my shame. But something in her eyes made me grab my sweater and follow her.

In the circle, women told stories that sounded a little like mine—about marriages that felt like cages, about dreams they’d buried under laundry and PTA meetings. One woman, Jessica, spoke about leaving her engineering job to become a painter. “Everyone thought I was crazy,” she laughed, eyes shining. “But I felt alive for the first time.”

Afterward, over tea, Jessica turned to me. “It’s hard, isn’t it? The guilt.”

I nodded. Tears stung my eyes.

“You don’t stop being a mother just because you stepped away. My kids hated me for a long time. Now they see me. The real me.”

I walked home that night with hope flickering in my chest, fragile as a match flame. Maybe there was a way to be both: a mother and a person with dreams.

Days blurred into weeks. I got a job at a bookstore downtown, shelving paperbacks, recommending novels to strangers. I started painting again, something I’d abandoned when Jacob was born. The bright colors on the canvas felt like a secret language only I could speak.

Michael sent a photo of Emma’s drawing: stick figures holding hands, a sun overhead. “Emma drew our family. She misses you.”

I called. Emma’s voice sang through the phone, tentative and sweet. “When are you coming home, Mommy?”

I swallowed my tears. “Soon, baby. I promise.” But what did ‘home’ even mean now? The life I’d left behind felt like a faded photograph—real, but unreachable.

I started therapy, peeling away years of resentment and exhaustion. I talked about how I’d wanted more—more adventure, more color, more of myself. My therapist nodded. “You’re allowed to want things, Sarah. Even mothers.”

Linda hugged me on the porch one evening. “You’re finding your way. Not everyone has the courage.”

But every night, as I lay in bed, I wondered: Had my search for myself cost my children too much? Could love survive the distance I’d put between us?

I write this letter now, two months after I left, with the Pacific crashing outside my window. I don’t know if I’ll ever fully forgive myself. But I know I’m breathing again. I’m living. And I hope, one day, my children will understand that I left not because I didn’t love them, but because I needed to remember who I was before I was anyone’s anything.

Do you think it’s possible to come back from something like this? Can a mother chase her own dreams and still be a good mom? I wonder if anyone else has ever felt this torn—and what you would have done if you were me.