By Yuri Yamamoto

“But she is my mom… Why does she reject me?” Cried a grown white man hidden under a white hospital blanket. I met the man only once and don’t remember much about him. But he was suffering far away from home and expressed his loneliness and desolation. I tried to see him later, but he never wanted to see me again and soon left the hospital.

It was a long time ago. I was still new to the chaplain training and was awkwardly navigating my way around raw human emotions of others and my own.

I still remember the cloudy sky outside the window of his unlit hospital room. As he cried, my heartstrings vibrated ever so slightly with a tiny scream: “But she was my mom… How could she not believe me?”

I was molested by a stranger at age seven. Around that time, I became angry at my mother without knowing why. Sometime after her death, I realized that I had thought she did not believe me. I still remember our exact conversation and she said nothing to the effect, but the despair was etched in my heart, and the crevice between us continued to grow in my mind.

I had done a lot of processing, but the hurt little me is still present. From time to time, I think about the man in the hospital. How is he doing? Did he reconcile with his mother? I want to know because I lost my chance with my mother.

I wish I got to know her better. I want to understand her not only as my mother but also someone who had dreams and brokenness of her own. She was a daughter, a big sister, an ambitious young woman, a friend, a career woman, a refugee, a lover, a wife, a volunteer, and many more. She laughed, cried, and was angry, too.

In the kin-dom of God, suffering may not go away completely, but our responses — not reactions — to it will change. We will cultivate compassion and love to hold our own and others’ stories so that we get to know each other deeply and grow together. In fact, we need not wait for the kin-dom of God to come. We can begin right now to realize it here and now.

Yuri Yamamoto (they/she) is a board-certified chaplain, ordained and endorsed by the Federation of Christian Ministries. After coming from Japan to the U.S., Yuri was a scientist (molecular biology/plant biology) and a church musician in a Unitarian Universalist congregation. Their theological education is from Shaw University Divinity School, and after two CPE residencies, Yuri is serving as a clinical chaplain in a close custody state prison. Yuri and their husband have six kids, four kids-in-law, four grand kids, and one dog.