At 77, I Finally Understand Why My Mother Never Smiled in Photos

Описание: At 77, I Finally Understand Why My Mother Never Smiled in Photos

I was going through old family photographs last winter when I finally understood something that had puzzled me my entire life. In every single photo—birthdays, holidays, family vacations—my mother never smiled. Not once. She always had this distant, neutral expression, like she was somewhere else entirely.
My name is Christine Moreau. I'm 77 years old. When I was eight, I asked my mother why she never smiled in pictures. She said something I didn't understand at the time: "Some things are easier to hide when you're not smiling." Then she changed the subject, and we never talked about it again.
My father had what we called "a temper" back then. What that really meant was that he was violent, controlling, and my mother spent 42 years of marriage walking on eggshells, trying to protect my brother and me, trying to survive. But she never talked about it. Not to us, not to anyone. In the 1950s and 60s, you didn't talk about these things.
After she died in 2012, my brother and I found something in her closet. A journal. Scattered entries written over decades on scraps of paper, envelopes, grocery lists. And one entry from 1968 finally explained everything.
She wrote: "I avoid smiling in pictures because when I smile, it feels like lying. The photographs will be proof of the truth I cannot speak. Someday, someone will look at these pictures and wonder why I never smiled. And maybe they will understand."
She was documenting her reality the only way she could. She was leaving evidence. She was telling the truth without words because she couldn't speak it out loud.
This is my mother's story. And it's the story of why we need to look more carefully at old family photographs and ask what the people in them were really trying to tell us.

CHAPTERS:
0:00 - She Never Smiled in Photos
2:15 - Growing Up in My Mother's House
5:00 - The Truth We Couldn't Name
7:45 - When I Finally Left Home
9:50 - After My Father Died
12:20 - The Journal We Found
14:45 - What She Was Really Telling Us

#relationship #motivation #life #lifelessons