seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Russia
seen from Netherlands
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Ukraine
seen from China
seen from Spain
seen from Spain
seen from Spain
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Japan
seen from Israel
seen from China
seen from Brazil
seen from Israel
seen from Lebanon
I hope you realize you lost a version of me I’ll never offer again.
I don’t even know how to hold all this.
There are no real words for this kind of ache.
The kind that swells in your throat and lives behind your ribs
The kind that whispers “this week was supposed to be different.”
My life was meant to shift, beautifully, irreversibly and into something softer.
Instead, it’s unraveling in ways I never saw coming.
And the silence left behind is so loud I can barely breathe.
I miss something that never got the chance to be.
I miss something that was and is now gone.
I miss who I was before all this grief hollowed me out.
I go to bed wishing it were all a dream and still, somehow, I wake up.
Still, somehow, I go on.
But my god, it hurts.
Humble cause I seen how it can get. Not bitter just built different.
Not everything deserves my energy. Some things are beneath the frequency I operate on.
It’s funny.
People think grief announces itself. That it walks into a room before you do. That everyone notices it.
They don’t.
Grief is quieter than that.
It badges into work at 8:30. Logs into a computer. Answers emails. Laughs when it’s supposed to. Says, “I’m good.”
Because that’s easier than watching people panic over an honest answer.
Today, I watched a room fill with warmth.
Flowers.
Lunch.
Ice cream.
Smiles that reached people’s eyes.
A celebration.
And before anyone says it;
She deserved it. Every second of it.
This isn’t about her.
This is about the strange ache of watching people demonstrate that they were always capable of kindness.
Just…
Not when I needed it.
Because I came back too.
Not with baby pictures. Not with stories about sleepless nights or first smiles.
I came back after twenty weeks of dreaming.
Twenty weeks of imagining your face.
Twenty weeks of planning a future that ended before it ever began.
I came back to a crib already built.
A stroller still folded.
Tiny clothes still waiting.
Books I had already imagined reading to you.
Stuffed animals that never got their little best friend.
And somehow…
The hardest part wasn’t learning how to live with that.
It was walking into work and realizing everyone else expected me to.
No flowers.
No welcome.
No gentleness.
Just a desk that wasn’t even mine yet.
Someone else’s things still filling the space I was supposed to return to.
As if there was no rush.
As if the woman walking back through those doors hadn’t already survived the unimaginable.
They asked me to write an email.
Can you imagine that?
To summarize the worst day of your life into something appropriate for the workplace.
How do you type,
“My son died,”
and end it with,
“Kind regards.”
How do you make grief sound professional?
How do you make motherhood fit into a corporate template?
You don’t.
But apparently…
You ask the grieving mother to try.
And then life keeps moving.
Except it doesn’t.
Not for you.
Because every lunch you’re never invited to…
Every celebration you hear about afterward…
Every inside joke you weren’t there for…
Every time you’re asked to help but never asked to belong.
Teaches you something.
Not about grief.
About belonging.
Or rather…
The lack of it.
So today wasn’t about flowers.
It wasn’t about lunch.
It wasn’t about ice cream.
It was about sitting in a room full of evidence that care can be organized.
That desks can be cleaned.
That supplies can be restocked.
That people can make time.
Show up.
And realizing,
No one did that when I came back.
Do you know what that feels like?
To lose your child…
And then lose the version of your community you thought existed?
Because I do.
Every single day.
I still say good morning.
I still smile.
I still try.
Not because they earned it.
Because that’s who I was before grief.
Before silence.
Before I learned how lonely a room full of people could feel.
Maybe that’s who I grieve now.
Not just my son.
But the woman who walked into this building believing that if the worst thing imaginable ever happened to her…
Someone would reach back.
And maybe…
The cruelest part isn’t that no one comforted me.
It’s realizing…
I stopped expecting them to.
Some things you don’t heal from. You just learn how to carry them with grace
I lost my baby this year, and for a while, I thought I lost myself too.
But I’m still here, still breathing.
But in the quiet moments, and in the words my therapist spoke — that she’s proud of me?!
For once, I am too. I found a small light.
The ache will never leave. But it no longer drowns me. Grief isn’t gone. Joy isn’t either. Turns out they can coexist.
Today, I feel like me again. And even if it’s only for today, I’m grateful for the way forward.
