The Vault is a digital library featuring memoir, short fiction, and poetry. Here, we celebrate our deepest thoughts, our darkest secrets, and our untold experiences worth sharing.

memoir

Laugh the Pain Away

Written by Daphney Joseph, Illustration by Stephanie Singleton

The journey through this tender story by Daphney Joseph is a witnessing of the intimacies of love, and the way a mother’s touch reaches through us, changing over time as we grow into adults and begin to see our mothers as individuals with their own desires.

Daphney reminds us that even the strongest amongst us are also delicate and vulnerable. We have to remember the tireless work of Black women who we hold in the highest esteem just for being. Because being is enough. We have to remember our immigrant mothers who traveled, started new lives, and birthed generations in a fight for access and peace of mind. We have to remember them even when we don’t know their names or when we cannot write. It’s important to honour memory as a storyteller. Telling stories keeps them alive. We have to remember them. Our mothers, our first homes, our joy, our strength. We remember their joy, and their pain. We can lift them up, as they did for us when we were babies. We lift them up as memories, as homes we will always reside in.