A Texas woman was looking through an old box of photographs from her childhood when she came across one with a message on the back written by her mom.
But as Mandi Bunch from Dallas read on, the initial joy she had felt at finding the picture subsided into an altogether different and entirely unexpected feeling. For the longest time, Bunch had all but forgotten this photo, and the many others that accompanied it, even existed.
“My ex-husband and I divorced four years ago and he had a box of my things he was lugging around all this time,” Bunch told Newsweek. “I was finally able to coordinate with him and get it last week. It was mostly photo albums. I started looking through them.”
Some of the pictures were of memories and moments that Bunch had long forgotten, but in among the pile of photos was one from a day she still remembered: a picture of her smiling from ear to ear on a family trip out in her grandfather’s boat.
Mandi Bunch as a child. Her mom’s comment on the back left her stunned.
TikTok/@maaaaaandi
“That was one of the few photos I found that I had a very vivid memory of. I remember my grandfather, taking me to try on life jackets and picking out the one in the photo. It was his boat that we were on,” she said. “I turned the photo over excited to see what was on the back but the color just drained from my face as I read what was written there.”
In a video posted to Bunch’s TikTok account, @maaaaaandi, she shared a snapshot of what was written in what she recognized as her mother’s handwriting. It reads: “Amanda when we went to the lake on my day off. Notice her bag of Oreos, she doesn’t leave home without them. Guess you can tell. She told me today that malts are good for your body. On this day I tried to water ski, I bombed(?) out.”
Krystine Batcho, Ph.D., a professor at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York who studies nostalgia, previously discussed the impact looking at childhood photos can sometimes remind us of who we once were and what we once went through.
“Viewing a childhood photo, someone might realize how very young they had been when they experienced a transformative event. They might suddenly understand how vulnerable and innocent they had been,” she wrote for Psychology Today. “The recognition of who they were then can impact their current self-esteem or change their understanding of how their past contributed to who they had become. Such insights can prompt positive or negative responses.”
That proved to be the case for Bunch, who was caught off-guard by the message. “I didn’t even notice the bag of Oreos at first! And none of my memories about that day included eating cookies. I remember being on the water, a hot summer day, being with family—just all the good things,” she said.
But it also made her reflect on her relationship with her mother, who she is largely estranged from today. “I was living with my grandparents at the time, so seeing my mom and my little brother was not a daily or even a weekly thing,” she recalled. “I guess I didn’t live with her enough for it to really sink in that this is how she thought about me.”
The message on the back of the photo. The color drained from Mandi’s face as she read it.
TikTok/@maaaaaandi
Though she admits her mom’s comments were “a little shocking,” their discovery could not have been better timed. “I was no contact with her for quite some time,” Bunch said.
“About a week before I found this photo she reached out to me to invite me to her upcoming wedding. I initially said I was not interested in a relationship with her. But then I was taking some time to think about it. Parents don’t live forever—right?”
Finding the picture helped make up her mind not to attend the wedding. “The universe wasn’t dropping hints, it was essentially slapping me in the face,” she said.
There has been a silver lining to the experience though, after Bunch plucked up the courage to share her discovery on social media. “The response was overwhelming,” she said. “People on the internet can be the worst sometimes. Hiding behind a screen seems to make people so comfortable saying the most awful things. But over 2,000 people stopped to say something kind, share similar experiences, and just be uplifting.”
One user commented: “I didn’t even see the cookies, I just saw a happy kid on a boat. I like my version better” with another writing: “All I saw was a little girl smiling big after a fun day. Mom was clearly fighting her own battles.
A third, meanwhile, saw the experience as a good metaphor for life, explaining: “you get to choose which side of the photograph you leave facing up.”
Bunch has taken a huge amount of comfort from those responses and many more besides “Sometimes you’ll never hear the things you need from the people that should say them,” she said. “But kindness from people who have no obligation whatsoever is a very special gift.”
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