The Ache of not Being Recieved

My mother once said to me:

“Ke lekile ntho tsohle ngoanaka. Tsohle hoo neng ho se ho setse fela ke hore ke rekise masepa.”

Loosely translated, “I have tried everything my child, everything, the only thing left was to sell the leftovers of existence”

I did not fully understand the depth of those words then. I remember I laughed, I thought, typical M’e/ Mother always cracking jokes. Today I do.

That statement is not simply about trying different things. It carries the weight of a life lived in pursuit of possibility. It holds years of effort, sacrifice, grief, resilience, hope, disappointment, reinvention, and the refusal to give up even when the path keeps disappearing beneath your feet. It is the language of someone who has searched every corner of themselves and the world, looking for a place where what they carry can be received, valued, and exchanged. As I sit with those words today, I realize something else. I have developed a capacity to hold complexity in a way I never knew was possible. I can see how a person can do everything “right” and still find themselves standing before a closed door.

I can see how beneath the frustration is often something deeper: the longing to be met by a world capable of recognizing what you bring. That is what I hear in M’e’s words. Not defeat. But the ache of carrying something valuable in a world that sometimes only knows how to recognize the obvious. Today I honour her persistence. I honour everyone who has kept trying long after they have run out of explanations, long after they have run out of certainty, and sometimes even long after they have run out of hope. Because sometimes the greatest act of courage is not succeeding. It is continuing to carry your gift while waiting for the world to catch up to it.