A Season I Remember

In From the Loquat Tree, I talk a lot about the kind of strength that grows in quiet places—strength that doesn’t announce itself but steadies you when life is shaking. Love often grows the same way. It doesn’t always bloom in perfect conditions. Sometimes it survives in the shadows, in the places where pain and hope meet and wrestle for space.

My aunt’s story is one of those stories.

As a young woman, she lived through heartache and abuse at the hands of the man she loved most. It’s the kind of pain that settles deep, the kind that could have easily hardened her heart or closed her spirit. But instead, she chose a different path. She chose endurance—not for the suffering, but for herself and her baby girl.

As a child, spending my summers with her, I didn't grasp all of that. At the time, I simply knew her as the woman who prepared my favorite dishes, always had dessert ready, ensured the vacuum lines on the living room carpet were immaculate, laughed heartily and effortlessly, and always had the scent of warm sunshine and laundry drying outside. I was present but slightly unaware of the background of her quiet resilience or the challenges she had overcome long before I ever spent summers in her home.

But even as a child, I felt something steady in her presence. A softness that had survived. A strength that had roots.

Those summers shaped me. I saw firsthand that a woman can walk through fire and still offer warmth. She showed me that endurance doesn’t mean enduring the pain longer than necessary; it means choosing healing, choosing hope, and choosing to love again in your own time and in your own way.

That’s the kind of endurance I write about in From the Loquat Tree:

Love that heals rather than harms.

Love that restores rather than breaks.

Love that shows up in the next generation, we pray that it is with more clarity, courage, and determination than before.

Her story serves as a reminder that even when the branches of our lives tremble, the roots can remain strong. Genuine self-love, rooted in healing, truth, and resilience, persists not due to the challenges but despite them.

And sometimes, it’s the quiet summers we spend in the presence of someone who has endured that teach us the most about what love really means. This is for you...