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Elena Ruiz
Age 33 · Mama to Camila & Mateo
Letters to my children — so they will always know who I was.
Why I Started This
My name is Elena Ruiz. I am 33 years old, I have a four-year-old named Camila and a baby named Mateo who is four months old and currently asleep on my chest as I type this.
I am starting this project now — while I'm young, while I'm here, while the milk is still warm — because I want my children to know me. Not just as their mother, but as the woman I was before them and the woman I am becoming because of them.
These are my letters. They are honest and imperfect and very much me.
Letters to My Children
To Camila
The Year You Turned Four
My wild, magnificent Camila —
You are four years old right now and you are the most ferociously alive person I have ever met. You have opinions about your socks. You refuse all vegetables except carrots, which you will only eat if they are called "dragon fingers." You sing constantly — made-up songs, mostly, with dramatic key changes and lyrics about dogs and breakfast.
I want to remember you exactly like this. The way you run into a room like you own it. The way you say "actually" before every correction, your little hand raised. The way you crawl into our bed at 3am and announce, with absolute calm, that you had a bad dream and need to be "squished."
You are so much more than I imagined when I imagined you. That's the thing nobody tells you about having children — you imagine them, and then the real one arrives, and the real one is infinitely stranger and funnier and better than anything you pictured.
All my love, forever and in every direction, — Mama, March 2024
To Mateo
The First Months
My small, serious Mateo —
You arrived in November, in the blue hour just before dawn, and the first thing you did was look directly at me with an expression that said you had opinions about the whole situation and would share them in due course.
You are four months old as I write this. You smell like warmth and milk and the very beginning of everything. You have discovered your hands and treat them as profound subjects of study. You reserve your smiles like a miser — rarely, and only for things that truly earn them. When you do smile, it's the most important thing that has ever happened.
I am so glad you're here. I'm so glad I get to be your mother.
You don't know me yet, not really. But I promise I'm going to spend the rest of my life making sure you do.
With all of me, — Mama, March 2024
To Both of You
Who I Am, Right Now
My loves —
Since you'll know me mostly as Mama, I want to tell you who else I am.
I am a woman who cries at nature documentaries and denies it. I love strong coffee and terrible reality television and very long walks where I listen to podcasts and pretend I am not also partially avoiding the dishes. I was a graphic designer before I had you, and I'm slowly becoming one again. I love colour and typography and the moment when a design clicks into place and you know it's right.
I am a daughter and a sister and a friend. My best friend Isabel has been my person since we were fifteen. She is the one who will tell you stories about me that I won't. Listen to her.
I am also someone who is afraid sometimes — of the future, of failing you, of not being enough. I am working on that. I am learning that "enough" is not a fixed destination.
I love you both in a way that has no ceiling. It just keeps going. — Mama
To My Future Self
A Note for When Things Get Hard
Dear Elena —
You are reading this on a hard day. I know because you don't open this letter on easy ones.
Here is what I want you to remember: you have gotten through every hard day so far. The maternity leave that felt endless. The colic weeks. The morning when Camila was sick and the baby was crying and the coffee machine broke and you sat on the kitchen floor and cried along with them — and then you got up.
You always get up.
You are a good mother. Not a perfect one — but a present one, an honest one, a trying-her-best one. That is enough. That is more than enough.
Drink some water. Go outside if you can. Text Isabel. And then come back in and try again, because that's what we do.
I love you. — Elena, March 2024
To My Children When They Are Grown
The Things I Hope You Carry
My grown-up darlings —
If you're reading this as adults, then I did it. I raised you. You got through childhood in one piece, and I am somewhere — maybe in the kitchen, maybe embarrassing you at your friend's birthday party, maybe not here at all — but wherever I am, I am so proud of you.
Here is what I hope you carry:
The way we said "I love you" before every single goodbye, even when it was rushed, even when we were annoyed at each other.
The Sunday morning ritual: everyone in pyjamas, music on, someone burning the toast.
The knowledge that our family is a safe place to fall apart. That you can come home with your mess and be held without judgment.
And this: the capacity to sit still in the middle of a beautiful ordinary day and notice that it is beautiful and ordinary and yours.
That is everything. — Mama
Traditions We Keep
Sunday Morning Music
Every Sunday without exception: pyjamas until noon, music loud enough that the neighbours definitely know what we're playing, someone making something for breakfast that's either wonderful or a disaster. No phones at the table. This is sacred.
The Before-Sleep List
Every night at bedtime, we each say three things: one thing that was good, one thing that was hard, and one thing we're looking forward to. Camila started calling it 'the list' when she was two. The baby will learn it too.
First Day of Every Month
On the first of every month, we take one photo together — wherever we are, whatever we look like. No filters, no retakes. Just the four of us in that exact moment. I have a folder of these. I'm going to make a book one day.
Abuela Carmen's Arroz con Leche
My grandmother made this every Sunday. My mother made this every Sunday. Now I make it, and Camila calls it 'the white rice pudding' and eats three bowls. Someday, I hope you'll make it too.
You'll need
- 1 cup short-grain white rice
- 4 cups whole milk
- 1 cup water
- ¾ cup sugar (or to taste)
- 1 cinnamon stick
- Zest of one lemon
- Ground cinnamon, for serving
How to make it
Rinse the rice and cook it gently in the water until absorbed. Add the milk, sugar, cinnamon stick, and lemon zest. Stir often — this is not a recipe for people who want to walk away — over low heat for about 35 minutes until thick and creamy. Taste as you go. Pour into bowls, dust with cinnamon. Serve warm. Think of your great-grandmother.
What I Know to Be True
"The bravest thing I ever did was become a mother — twice — and decide that was more than enough to build a whole life around."
"I want my children to know that joy is not a luxury. It's the whole point."
"When Camila asks me 'why?' for the seventh time in a row, I try to remember that curiosity is a gift. Try being the operative word."
Your children deserve to know you.
Start your letters today — while the coffee is hot, while the baby is sleeping, while you are fully, completely here.