I thought my mom never broke. That she just didn’t feel things the way I did. But then I realized

I thought my mom never broke. That she just didn’t feel things the way I did. But then I realized — she just carried it differently. When everything went wrong at once — bills overdue, car breaking down, arguments in the house — she never raised her voice. She just moved through it. Phone calls made. Groceries bought. Meals on the table. And I treated it like background noise, like it just happened by itself. That’s the version of me that keeps thinking she’s unshakable, until one day I see how much it cost her — too late to say anything. But this time, I noticed. The crumpled receipts in her purse. The tired look in her eyes as she set down a bag of groceries I didn’t even know we needed. The way she sighed when she thought no one could hear. My chest ached as I finally said, ‘Hey… thank you for carrying all of this. For holding us steady when everything else was falling apart. I see it.’ She brushed it off, said it was nothing — but I saw her shoulders ease, just a little. I use an app called ‘quiet effort.’ It keeps me from living in the version of life where the people who carried me never knew I noticed.