My inner safe place is often different each time I visit. The way it appears to me carries the nuances of where my mind is at the time. But there is one thing that is always there, no matter how my sanctuary shifts and changes: the memory of the first time I held her.
I wasn’t supposed to keep her. She was meant to be released for adoption. She was taken away from me immediately after her birth, as planned. But somewhere in the hush of the hospital night, a nurse — not knowing the arrangement — brought her to me for a feeding.
And I touched her. And in touching her, something deeper rooted itself inside me.
It wasn’t logical. It wasn’t planned. It was something far older than paperwork, older than fear. It was a bond sealed in the space between heartbeats, before anyone could stop it.
That moment created the foundation of my sanctuary. It is the place inside me where no one else’s decisions could reach. Only she and I existed there, beyond anyone’s plans or expectations.
No matter what other objects are in my sanctuary, this truth is always here.
It is my anchor.
Those first months after her death, I spent entire days there.
The first time I found my sanctuary, it wasn’t soft. It wasn’t comforting. It was a small, dark hole.
The walls were jagged — rough enough to slice open my skin if I reached out to steady myself. The floor was wet and cold, with no place to sit, no comfort to be had. There was no light. No warmth.
Just the truth — the simple, terrible truth — that she was gone.
Gone and never coming back.
The space was small, because that truth was everything. A single, shattering moment that collapsed the rest of my life beneath it.
But over time, as I began to see not just her death but the destruction it left behind, the space changed.
It grew.
It opened into something cavernous, and that was almost worse.
There were ledges, sudden drop-offs. Unstable footing. The air smelled like warm earth and something ancient — the faint scent of decomposing plant matter, like the forest floor in late autumn.
The sounds I made — the screams, the sobs, the broken words — bounced off the stone walls and came back to me louder than I meant them to be. They shattered against the cavern walls and tumbled into the darkness below, as if even my grief had to fall somewhere.
But then, one day, something shifted.
I heard a voice — a woman’s voice — echoing softly from around a bend.
It wasn’t calling out to me exactly, but I recognized it. Somewhere deep in my bones, I knew it.
It was her. The night nurse. The one who unknowingly undid everything.
The one who, by accident or grace, brought my daughter to me that first night.
She didn’t know the plan. She just saw a baby and a mother and did what made sense.
Her voice in my memory is gentle but clear, like light catching the edge of a wall in the darkness. I follow the sound through the cavern, around the bend, and suddenly — I’m there again.
Back in the hospital.
Back in that moment.
Back in the quiet where I first held her.
And that moment — that simple, sacred, accidental moment — becomes the first thing in the sanctuary that offers me comfort.
And it’s the one thing that is always there when I visit.
The first time I held her.
The moment I didn’t mean to have.
The moment I’ll never let go of.
Though there were times I entered the sanctuary and found memories waiting — uninvited, unexpected —there were other times when I carried them in with me.
Some memories refused to be avoided. They planted themselves firmly in my path, and so I picked them up and descended, holding them close.
Not just the worst memories — but the ordinary ones. The small, intimate ones.
Those hurt more, somehow, than the life-shattering moments.
A mischievous smile. A shared joke. Her voice saying “I love you” in that way that shattered my heart all over again.
Yet through the pain, I was learning how to be again.
Bringing memories down into that space helped me understand them better.
I would sit in the small places worn smooth from previous visits and cradle them to my chest. Places to rest — places where I didn’t crumble under the truth of her death.
I think that’s where healing begins. Not in the outside world, but in the stillness of rest.
And so it went, for years and years. Thousands of visits. Each one reshaping my soul, turning it — slowly, faithfully — back toward the light.
Grief made room for memory. And memory made room for life.
Over the years since her death, my inner sanctuary has undergone immense change. Years passed as the architecture softened and shifted.
As I changed.
Sharp edges wore down as memories and emotions continually washed over them. Towering stone cliff faces — once solid and impenetrable — cracked in places, allowing small beams of sunlight to slip through. The light reached the cavern floor and revealed things I needed to see.
But only when I was ready.
My soul allowed me to acknowledge what it could bear to carry, in its own time.
And then one day, not long ago, I noticed something new.
The gathered light — once scattered and hesitant — had begun to rise.
It spread upward, casting a warm illumination, and for the first time, it touched nearly the entire space.
And I could see. Not just the grief. But the shape of who I had become inside it.
Dozens of memories are nestled among the moss that now covers the stone floor and climbs up the walls. Not all of those moments are happy ones. But I am content they are there. This is how it must be.
I never want to forget anything connected to Becca.
More often these days, though, I see something new. Something from my life since losing my daughter. And there is room for those, too, in my sanctuary.
There is a necessity that they exist among the past.
My core self is still different every time I venture within. I think it will always be this way — until the day I am no longer here. Shifting as my relationship with grief continues to deepen and expand.
I am perpetually becoming.
Becoming as life draws me in and forces me to make changes,
and acknowledge there is still a future for me.
Words Can Express 