The Shape of Silence
Tiny Memoir #5
“Who was I named after?” I asked my mom every time my brother and I got to visit her growing up. Sometimes months would pass before we’d see her again. Sometimes years.
“You were named after the Beatles’ song “Michelle, My Belle,” she said, her eyes twinkling. “Only, I spelled Michele with one “L” just to be different.” Her arms soft and warm, she pulled us close and told us our origin stories. “And your brother was named after Christopher Robin.”
“Like in Winnie the Poo.” I excitedly announced, proud of remembering; hoping to make her smile; and happy to be with her again, if only for a short time.
I was born on a Friday—a fact I discovered in my forties, thanks to the internet. It was strange to realize my mother couldn’t provide details to the questions I had about my birth. About my father. About my life. Early on, I avoided the questions that caused her to pull away from me. “What was my dad like? How old were you when you got married? How did he die?”
And so I shaped myself around the fear of rejection, learning to stay quiet to hold onto love.
Michele Peters writes from the heart with a goal of bringing light into dark places. She lives in the Pacific Northwest, USA, and discovered the power of her stories when she read live for the nationally syndicated show Listen to Your Mother in Spokane, Washington. Her work appears in So God Made a Grandma (March 2025) and The Loss of a Lifetime: Grieving Siblings Share Stories of Love, Loss, and Hope (June 2025). Michele is currently writing a coming-of-age memoir and regularly shares nonfiction essays at Light Into Dark Places on Substack.
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There's so much feeling packed into these words. Bravo!
This is a very moving piece about the weight of not knowing, and later putting together the pieces of one's origin. There is a persistent drag on our conscious awareness, fearing that our parents were not our original ones and our longing to believe the changing stories they tell us through the years. There is always that step not taken, towards truth and serenity.