Grief often finds expression in deeply personal ways. For Jake Bley, honoring the memory of his late mother meant carrying a small piece of her handwriting with him forever.
In June 2024, Bley shared a story on social media that quickly touched millions of people. On the 10th anniversary of his mother’s death, he got his first tattoo, a phrase taken directly from his mom’s diary entry written the night he was born.
Credit:Jake Bley/instagram
The tattoo reads just four simple words: “Only a little fellow.”
Those words were the very first thing his mother wrote about him after he entered the world.
Key Takeaways
Jake Bley honored his late mother Nicki Bley, who died in 2014, with a tattoo of her diary entry from the day he was born.
The diary entry from 1989 included the phrase “Only a little fellow.”
His mother had left her diaries to him before she died from leukemia.
On the 10th anniversary of her passing in June 2024, Jake chose to tattoo the phrase in her handwriting.
Sharing the story online sparked thousands of messages from people sharing their own experiences with grief and remembrance.
Jake’s mother, Nicki Bley, passed away in 2014 at the age of 46 after battling acute myeloid leukemia for about a year. At the time, Jake was in his early twenties.
Before she died, Nicki gave each of her five children a special keepsake. For Jake, she left something incredibly meaningful: her collection of handwritten diaries, which she had been writing in since she was 8 years old.
At the time of her passing, the emotional pain of losing his mother made it difficult for him to look through them.
Years later, however, Jake finally felt ready.
When he opened a small red Collins diary from 1989, the year he was born, he flipped to the exact date of his birth. That’s when he found the entry his mother had written on that life-changing day.
The page included details like:
- The time of his birth
- His weight and measurements
- A short personal note from his mom
Under the statistics, she wrote simply:
“Only a little fellow.”
Jake had been born prematurely and weighed about 5.7 pounds, which explained the affectionate comment.
But to him, those words meant much more.
When he read the entry, he realized he was looking at the very first thoughts his mother had about him.
“The second I saw it, I thought: these were her first thoughts about me,” he later said.
As the 10-year anniversary of his mother’s passing approached in June 2024, Jake felt the need to mark the moment in a meaningful way.
He decided to turn that diary entry into a tattoo, written exactly in his mom’s handwriting.
He took the day off work and walked into a tattoo studio without an appointment. After explaining the story to the tattoo artist, they carefully traced the writing from the diary onto his skin.
The phrase was tattooed on his leg, becoming his first tattoo ever.
When it was finished, Jake said the experience was unexpectedly emotional.
He described sitting in his car afterward and crying happy tears, feeling as if a weight had lifted from his shoulders. For the first time in years, he allowed himself to fully process his grief.
Jake documented the tattoo process in a TikTok video, where he talked openly about loss and healing. The video quickly spread online and his posts on X (formerly Twitter) gained millions of views.
What surprised him most was how many people connected with the story.
Strangers began sharing their own experiences of losing parents, finding keepsakes, and discovering unexpected ways to honor loved ones.
Jake later said that hearing these stories helped him realize something important: grief may feel isolating, but many people share the same emotional journey.
He also started revisiting more of the items his mother left behind, diaries, photographs, letters, and notes that reveal parts of her life he never knew before.
In a way, the tattoo became more than just a tribute.
It became the beginning of rediscovering who his mother was beyond the role of “Mom.”
What makes this story powerful isn’t just the tattoo, it’s the reminder that the smallest things often carry the greatest meaning.
A few handwritten words in an old diary became a lifelong connection between a mother and her son.
For Jake, those four words now serve as a permanent reminder of love, memory, and the first moment his mother met him.
Stories like this remind us that love doesn’t disappear with loss, it simply changes form. If this story touched you, share it with someone who has lost a loved one or someone who might need a reminder that memories can live on in meaningful ways.
For more uplifting and emotional stories about family, love, and the ways people honor those they’ve lost, keep reading Simply Wholesome.
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