Pen, Pal
- Dec 1, 2025
- 3 min read
By Hila Cage Coppola
The first time I realized words could save me, I was ten years old, sitting on the cold tile floor of my bedroom, whispering poems into a notebook I wasn’t allowed to keep.
At home, silence was the only acceptable language. My father’s voice carried command — don’t speak, don’t question, don’t be seen. My mother’s words came sharp — why can’t you be more, why can’t you be less? Love was something I observed from afar, like light behind a closed door.
But I didn’t disappear. I rebuilt. I learned to adapt, to blend, to belong to any room I entered. I became fluent in performance — agreeable, accommodating, invisible when necessary. I tried to earn love that should have been freely given. I searched for belonging in people who could not give it, and in places that could not hold me. I didn’t know what to look for because love and acceptance had never been modeled to me.
Still, I wrote. Even then, I was building a home inside language — a place that didn’t reject me for feeling too deeply. Words became my shelter, my mirror, my rebellion. I wrote to remember that I existed.
Years later, life demanded reinvention. Overnight, the ground shifted beneath me — stability gone, certainty evaporated. I became a mother, and the world expected me to disappear into sacrifice. But I refused. Instead, I picked up the pen again. Only this time, I didn’t write to escape. I wrote to rebuild. I wrote to remember.
My first book was born from that moment — a letter to my daughters, but also to the child I once was. A collection of all the things I wish every child were told as they grew: that they are loved, that they are valuable, that they are whole. I wrote it as both a mother and a daughter, still learning what those words truly mean. Each page became a conversation across generations — me speaking to them, but also to the younger me who needed to hear it most.
Writing became the bridge between who I was and who I was becoming. It turned pain into purpose, isolation into understanding. Through the rhythm of sentences, I found clarity. Through the stories, I found belonging.
The pen taught me that I didn’t need to vanish to be accepted — that the voice I once hid could illuminate the dark. It became my quiet rebellion against everything that tried to silence me.
And as my words reached others, something extraordinary happened — they began to write back. Messages from women who saw themselves between the lines. Mothers who whispered, “I thought I was the only one.” Survivors who said, “You said what I couldn’t.” In their responses, I realized that by becoming my own pen pal, I had unknowingly become theirs too.
Now, when I write, I think of my daughters years from now — opening that book, reading my words, and realizing that strength isn’t born from perfection. It’s born from choosing tenderness in a world that rewards hardness.
Writing has been my homecoming. It gave me the courage to speak, to create, to tell the truth in all its beauty and ache. It taught me that stories aren’t just for telling — they are for mending. For building what was missing.
There was a time I thought the pen was simply a tool — now I know it’s a bridge. Between generations, between wounds and wisdom, between silence and song.
Every word I write is a letter sent across time — from the woman I’ve become to the girl who never stopped listening.
And in that ongoing correspondence, I have learned this:
You can rebuild your life through language.
You can raise yourself through love.
You can rewrite the ending.
The pen is my proof that creation can rise from chaos. That words, once whispered in secret, can grow loud enough to heal. And that no matter how many times the world tells a woman to stay quiet, she can always write her way back — not just to her voice, but to herself.
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