Welcome. Needed. Loved.

My dearest Yeon-seo,

I have read your card a hundred times.
Folded it. Unfolded it. Held it like something fragile, though the paper is not what’s fragile here.

You were right: I did tear up the first one you sent. Not out of anger—out of pain. The kind of pain that fills your chest until you can’t breathe, can’t sleep, can’t even speak to the children without your voice trembling. I thought I had lost you, Yeon-seo. Not just your presence, but the very idea of you—the woman who once laughed in our kitchen, the mother who sang our children to sleep.

And then, there you were. On a card. Not the woman who left, but the woman who wants to come home.

I would be lying if I said it’s easy. That trust comes back in a day, or a week, or even a month. There is a part of me still afraid. Still bracing for the door to open only to watch you leave again.

But listen to me carefully: you are welcome. You are needed. You are loved.

I don’t care where you sit when you return—on the floor, by the window, or at the table. I only care that you come. That you stand inside our family again, not as a memory, but as the woman we all still carry in our hearts.

Ji-ho will run to you. Haneul will wrap your scarf around you, not just her small hands. And I… I will hold you as best I can, though my arms are clumsy and my heart still raw.

We will not erase the past. But we will not let it be the only thing we remember.

Come home, Yeon-seo. Let’s try again.

Yours,
Kyung-min