grieving mothers – Words Can Express

On Returning

A picture of Lester Street. The street where we lived. Where I brought my Becca home. I drove back up there today just to get this photo because I knew it had to be the image I used with this piece of writing.

Whenever I am up at the farm, caring for the animals while the owners are away, I feel myself pulled north. Where I live now, fifty miles from the town I grew up in, I never feel the urge to return. But the farm sits only sixteen miles away, and it feels almost wrong not to go. As if the town has its own orbit, and once I step this close, I’m caught inside it.

I don’t know why I am drawn to the town I gladly left. The farm is less than twenty miles from the street where I lived. A short ride in physical distance, but the time I travel into the past is much farther. Usually, by the second or third day of farmsitting, I drive to the stop sign at the end of the road and turn the car north.

The flickering of sun through the trees unsettles me, making it too easy to slip into the past, to see the landscape as it was forty years ago. Enough has changed, but just enough remains to trick me into believing I’m heading back to the place I once left.

The curve in the road, to the left, and the bridge traversing the Muskegon River. The Manistee National Forest sign. The intersection where a bar stood in the 70’s, and the urban legend of a girl hit there one night—her remains scraped from the asphalt. A factory that promised jobs for the people in the impoverished area. The big sign welcoming drivers to the spot “where the north begins and pure waters flow.”

By the time I reach that sign, my stomach knots. My hands grip the steering wheel tighter. A lump rises in my throat. Why do I do this to myself? As always, I turn right down the street that takes me to the millpond where I spent many summers swimming. It’s gone now—the dam must have broken.

I park in the small lot across the street and let my mind slip back to those summer days—the long, hot walk from my house, the dread that certain kids from school would be there waiting to bully me, the immense relief when they weren’t. Always on guard, always scanning. And then the cool shock of the water when I finally dove in, the pruned fingers and tired muscles after a day spent trying to swim myself clean.

When I leave the lot I drive a block or two north and turn left, passing the old co-op. The building I remember on the right is gone now. The one on the left still stands. How many times did a younger me push through that door, the smell of goat feed my parents had specially mixed hanging in the air. The voices of gruff old farmers rose and fell around me, and the woman at the desk, gruff herself, always lowered her voice when she spoke to me, slipping me a wink. And each time the door opened, the bell gave its jingle, marking my passage in and out.

The car bumps over the railroad tracks and I am back at the main road.

I pull to a stop at the red light, waiting to turn left and go through town. Was there even a light here when I was young? Or just a blinking yellow for those passing through? My eyes fix on the dark wood building half a block up. It used to be Smith’s Tavern; now it’s a fireworks store.

A horn blasts behind me and I’m yanked forward into today.

I notice Rosenberg Hardware has moved, though the name endures. The old courthouse—huge, ornate, proud—is gone, replaced by a flat, forgettable building with no character. The post office is unchanged, and I realize I’m going through a kind of checklist: this is still here, this is gone. Why do I keep doing this?

And then the library. How could I forget? That place was my escape, my portal. Until the day a worker said: Let her bring that baby in here and I’ll be able to tell who the father is. Even remembering it now makes my chest burn. I was angry then, heartbroken. This had been the place where summer reading programs lit me up. My name filled the checkout cards again and again, proof that I belonged here. For years, it was safe—the one place the bullies never followed. It turned out it wasn’t children I had to fear, but an adult. I never went back.

Decades later, it still presses against me. The library full of books and worlds became hostile ground. And even now, I feel the old surge—to shield my daughter, even her memory, from a town that once wanted to cut her down. A town that kept telling me I was an outsider.

The weight of that pain presses against me as I turn onto Lester Street. One block in, I reach the corner where I was ripped off my bike after school. Not the only time I was jumped there, but the one that stays: the day I lost the bike that had been a gift, something precious in a childhood where little came easy. The shame of walking home empty-handed, of trying to explain it to my parents, pressed heavier than the bruises.

Another memory rises. A car full of girls circling the dirt road, one furious because she thought I’d spoken to her boyfriend. I can’t remember if I had, but I can still see myself – legs flashing, weaving through trees, sprinting for home while they prowled the road. Branches whipped my arms and face. My chest burned with breath and shame, the crunch of dried leaves and twigs underfoot loud in my ears. Anger pushed me forward, but hopelessness chased me harder.

Driving it now, decades later, I see her again, that blur of motion. And my heart aches for her—for the small, scared girl running faster than she should have had to.

I spent so much time in this town just trying to keep myself invisible, unseen. Maybe that’s why I drive back now—to prove I’m no longer hidden, no longer theirs to erase.

Still, not everything in that town was shadow. When I turn toward the land where our house once stood, the grass grown over, the best of me rises. I see the apple tree where I lost myself in books, its heavy branches dripping with blossoms, bees humming above me. April, my sheep, followed close—nibbling my fingers, laying her head in my lap as if she belonged to me alone. And my horse, steady as breath, carrying me bareback through the woods with nothing but her mane to guide us, taking me where no one else could find me.

And then—the brightest memory of all. The day I carried my daughter home, small and perfect in my arms. I remember the weight of her, the way the house seemed to hold its breath as I crossed the threshold. For a moment, the world was only light. That single joy outshines so much of the darkness, and it always will.

Maybe this is why I keep coming back. To test the balance of shadow and light. To remind myself that even in the hardest years, there were creatures who loved me, beings I cared for who, in their quiet way, healed me. And there was her. Always her.

I return to measure what still presses against me and what has loosened. To trace the outline of the girl who once ran unseen, and the woman who refuses invisibility now.

Maybe I drive back not to punish myself with memory, but to claim it. To say, with both ache and defiance: this was mine, too.

And when I leave again, heading back toward the farm, I feel the orbit release me. For a while I am free, until the next time I drift close enough to be pulled in again.

On What Holds Its Breath

When I found an old folder filled with poems I had written years ago, I sat down and reread them with surprise . . . and recognition. I had forgotten how much I love the form of poetry, how it demands chiseling down to only what is necessary. A poem does not allow me to hide behind excess; it asks me to distill, to press thoughts and feelings into their most essential shape.

For years I’ve shared essays and reflections here, weaving stories into paragraphs. Now, I want to also let poems find their place among them. Poetry is another way of carrying the weight and wonder of life, grief, beauty, memory, love, in a form that breathes differently. It may arrive spare or lyrical, but it always asks the same thing prose does: to speak honestly, to hold what matters, and to offer it in words.

Not my image.

A field holds its breath
beneath a low veil of fog.
The grasses bend with dew,
each blade jeweled in silence,
waiting for the sun to rise high enough
to burn the mist away.

This is the hour between.
Not sky, not earth,
not gone, not yet held.
A place where sorrow lingers close,
dampening skin,
refusing to vanish.

Slowly I extend my hand into the vapor,
always hoping she’s reaching back.
Tender quiet is broken by the cry of a loon
from some unseen lake
whose edge I cannot name.

Soon the day will come,
the light will sharpen,
the dew will dry.
But for now,
I belong to the mist,
this tender veil
as thin as a breath,
between what was
and what remains.

On What Returns

Not my image.

There is a change in the air when summer knows it’s time to begin to say goodbye and make space for the next season. It’s a dance as old as time and the earth moves in practiced step as each of them move forth. And somewhere, just beyond the edge of the clearing, my old friend waits – leaning against an ancient pine, his coat made of fog, his breath heavy with the scent of pine needles and rain. He doesn’t rush me. He knows I’ll come. The blues is patient like that, knowing that when the air thickens and the light tilts, I’ll see him standing there, waiting for me.

I feel him before I see him. Dusk arriving early is always the first sign. My chest tightens; my steps falter – not because I don’t know him, but because I do. He is expected, familiar, but in the early days I wasn’t ready for his company. Our connection is different now. Looking forward to seeing him is too strong but there is a comfort when he’s near.

I nod when I reach him. He nods back. There’s no need for greetings – we have known each other too long. We fall into step, side by side, our pace slow enough to notice the damp grass bending beneath us. The crows follow, black shadows skipping from branch to branch, their wings beating the measure of our walk. He doesn’t speak at first. He never does. It’s me who breaks the silence, asking the same questions I always ask – why now, why again, how long will you stay? He only shrugs, the fog shifting around his shoulders like a cloak. The crows answer in his place, sharp cries echoing through the thinning light.

In those early years, the first decade or so after Becca was killed, his presence horrified me. Haunted was how I felt, as if grief were stalking me – waiting around every corner, slipping into every room. He existed only to remind me that my daughter was never coming back. And I hated him for it. His footsteps echoed in mine, heavy and relentless, and no matter how quickly I tried to walk, he was always there. The crows circled above, not companions then but omens, their cries sharp enough to flay. I lived in dread of his visits, even as I knew he would always return.

The season changed quickly this year. I thought I had more time before he appeared. But summer was ready to leave, and autumn was insistent.

We walk for a while in silence before I finally break it. “You’re back early this year,” I say. He shrugs, disturbing the fog around his shoulders. I watch until it settles again. Then he speaks.

“The seasons change when they will. You know that.”

“I do,” I reply. “But sometimes I wish you’d skip a year.”

He chuckles, low and hollow. “You wouldn’t know what to do without me.”

I glance at him. “That used to be true. In the beginning, you terrified me. You felt like a stalker, like grief itself walking at my side. I hated you.”

“And now?” he asks, his voice quieter, like rain slipping through pine needles.

“Now…” I pause, watching the crows settle above us. “Now you’re an old friend I don’t exactly look forward to, but I don’t dread either. You remind me I can still feel. You remind me Becca mattered enough to make me ache.”

He nods, and for a moment, even the crows fall silent. “Then I’ve done my work,” he says.

I don’t answer right away. Part of me wants to snap, to tell him his work was cruel. Part of me wants to thank him, for not letting me forget. What comes out instead is a sigh, heavy as the dusk around us. “Maybe. But you’ll be back again. I don’t think your work is truly ever finished.”

Above us, the crows scatter in all directions, their shrieks falling like shrapnel, leaving the air torn open between us. We stand there, he and I, in the deepening indigo light. For a moment I think of asking him to leave. To never return. But, I know I would miss his companionship.”

I look at my old friend. Once a foe who I felt was here to torment me, now as a trustworthy part of my life. Knowing there is nothing else to say we turn away from each other.

As we move in step, his scent lingers – moss and damp bark, the quiet perfume of things breaking down and beginning again. Comforting, in its way. A reminder that even endings feed the soil. He carries the cycle of life and death in his presence.

We walk until the last light drains from the sky. The crows settle into the branches above, silent now, as if even they know it’s time to rest. He will leave when he chooses, as he always has. But for now, we walk together, and the evening feels less empty with him beside me.

On Floating And Other Forms Of Stillness

Two nights ago, I went down to the lake just to float. Dusk was still a couple of hours away, but the sun had softened. It wasn’t as relentless, and neither was I.

My favorite season at the lake is winter—on the deepest, windiest days. The sand turns to stone beneath my feet, frozen solid. The gulls scream into the sky like something primal and furious. And the waves? They don’t roll—they reach. They claw toward the shore, grabbing at the sand, dragging bits of it back to the cold, dark belly of the water. It’s stark. Wild. Beautiful in a way that feels honest.

My second favorite time is summer—just before the sun goes down. The heat has broken. Most of the crowd has packed up, leaving behind footprints and laughter in the air. It’s quieter then. The beach stops performing. The lake exhales. And in that softness, it’s easier to just be.

By the time I got there, the beach was near perfect. The sun had dipped low, casting gentler light. A few scattered people lingered. Small waves rolled in, steady and unhurried. The water was cool, not cold. A long shadow stretched across the lake from the lighthouse, like even the light had grown contemplative.

As I floated farther out, I saw a perfect white down feather drifting nearby. The waves swelled just enough to propel it forward without pulling it under. I thought, Well, that has to be a metaphor.

Ride the waves. Don’t let the grief drown you.

Then I thought, That’s too on the nose. Too tired. Surely that couldn’t be the lesson.

As I twirled gently in the water, I saw the lighthouse shadow growing closer. The real lighthouse stood in the distance, still and sure, casting a long dark shape across the surface.

Grieving parents live with the shadows of what life used to be, I thought. We have to find a way to stay in the light.

But that wasn’t it either. That thought didn’t feel right. It felt forced, too polished to be true.

The seagulls cried above me, their haunting screams echoing across the sky. Their voices always touch something in me. I’ve written about them before, about the winter lakeshore and how it mirrors my inner landscape. Grief, embodied. I’ve written about it enough to know that, in this moment, I had nothing new to say.

In all actuality, I didn’t figure out what – if anything – the lake had to teach me until later that night.

Not while I was floating. Not while I was squinting for messages in feathers or light. But much later, while I lay in bed.

The house was still. That kind of deep, sacred quiet that only comes when the day has finally given up. And maybe I had, too. I wasn’t hunting for meaning anymore. I wasn’t trying to pin purpose to every ripple.

I just was.

Earlier, as I had floated, I told myself to stop worrying about what I needed to learn. To stop dissecting every detail for meaning. I let my head fall back. I extended my arms beside me, closed my eyes, and let the moment hold me.

As I’d been taught in counseling, when feeling overwhelmed, I checked in with my five senses.

The smell of the lake was slightly fishy, yet clean.

Distant boats sped by in the background, their hum a kind of white noise beneath the occasional gull call.

I tasted a bit of lake water on my lips, gritty from the sand.

The light beyond my eyelids changed—soft pink to blue, then violet—as clouds passed across the low sun.

But it was the feel of the water that rooted me. The gentle rocking of the float beneath me. My arms lifted and fell with the swells. My feet dangled lower than the rest of me, brushing the colder waters below.

I felt weightless.

I felt cradled.

I felt peace.

Later that night, in bed, I could still feel it. The coolness of my skin. The sensation of water. It was as if the lake had rinsed something off of me, something that had been gathering on my surface for a while.

Grief residue. Thought loops. The ache of trying too hard to make sense of what may never be made sense of.

I felt… cleansed.

And that’s when the realization came.

Yes, we must find our own truth in this journey. Yes, we must seek meaning, search for signs, ask the unanswerable questions. We must question grief.

But we also have to stop chasing. We have to allow space not to know.

Yes, we grieving parents are seekers. We reach for answers. We demand meaning. We beg for signs: Why don’t I see them? Is my child mad at me? Do they still exist?

So many of us feel haunted by silence, wrecked by the absence of proof.

We want to believe our children are near, still part of us, still somewhere.

And yet, sometimes the deeper truth is this:

The burn to understand will exhaust us. The hunger for truth will leave us hollow. The endless grasping will not bring them back.

There is wisdom in the pause. There is grace in the unknowing.

Not trying to figure it all out is just as important as seeking answers. Maybe more important, for the soul.

We have to make space to be still. To unplug. To remain idle. To refill what grief depletes.

As I lay there that night, the peace was still with me.

The next day, I tried to call it back. Tried to summon that sense of floating, of being held.

It was already harder.

And today, it’s harder still.

That’s the nature of moments like that. They aren’t permanent. They don’t live inside us unless we choose to keep making space for them.

The lake held me longer than I expected—but only because I stopped reaching.

Some truths can only be heard in the silence after we stop asking.

On A Small Kind Of Magic

The next generation held gently in mine.

The house was full. Full of children, full of noise, full of that particular kind of wild that only happens after time spent on the shore of Lake Michigan. They were sun-kissed and overtired, yelling over each other in bursts of joy and complaint. One of the little ones had begun to cry—too much fun always spills over somewhere.

Amid the chaos, I sat quietly, holding a cup in my hands like an anchor. It was one of those moments where the edges blur and something deeper stirs beneath the surface. I watched it all like a woman half in this world and half in another—the chaos around me a blur, the stillness inside me something hard-won. I used to dread moments like this, where joy and absence collided. Now, I just breathe through them.

Gabriel was seated across from me, his shoulders soft with fatigue. Julia, his partner, walked up behind him and wrapped her arms around him. I heard them exchange quiet I-love-yous—just for each other, but not hidden. A small, sacred thing passed between them.

Moments later, Alexa emerged from the kitchen with something she’d made for Matthew. He looked up and said, “Thank you, love,” without hesitation. The kind of love that doesn’t need ceremony. The kind that has settled in, becomes part of the rhythm.

And right then, in the middle of the noise and the movement and the mess of real life, I felt the room bend toward something holy.

The sunlight, low and golden, flickered through the trees and spilled through the window, stretching across the wooden floor. And for a moment, I saw her.

My Becca. Smiling. Standing in that beam of light as if it had carried her in. I didn’t move. I was afraid if I blinked, she’d disappear. But I wasn’t afraid of her. I was afraid of losing the moment.

Her eyes followed the children as they ran and tumbled and squealed through the house. She laughed—not aloud, but with her whole face. I didn’t hear her voice, only the faint melody of a wind chime from outside, like a sound remembered rather than heard.

My breathing slowed. My heartbeat quickened. And then she turned to me.

That smile—her enormous, heart-splitting smile—lit her face like it always had. Like she had never left. Like she was just standing on the other side of time.

And then she was gone. But not really. Not ever.

Later, when the children had calmed and the night began to stretch out soft and tired, I went home.

Sitting alone in my room I thought: This is what remains. Not just the grief. Not just the missing. But this—the life that still surrounds me, the love that grows, the magic that still dares to show up.

And here’s the part I couldn’t have imagined, years ago: That I’d be able to see it. Because in the early years, I couldn’t.

Grief narrowed my vision to what was gone, what would never be. Every joyful moment was filtered through the ache of Becca’s absence. Her missingness sat at the center of every gathering, louder than the laughter, sharper than the light.

But something changes—not quickly, and not easily. And, more importantly, never completely.

Over time, grief loosened its grip just enough to let in other things. Love. Laughter. Sunlight. Not instead of Becca, but alongside her.

I didn’t stop grieving. I never will. But I learned to hold both truths at once: That she is gone. And that there is still good.

And in that moment last night—children spinning, love spoken quietly across the room, and Becca in the light—I didn’t just see the beauty. I accepted it.

Not as a betrayal of her memory. But as an offering she would want me to receive.

It’s not that the ache has gone. It never will. But it has made room. And when moments like this arrive—when love spills out of my sons, when my grandchildren’s laughter fills the air, when Becca visits on a beam of sunlight—I don’t brace myself. I open. I accept. And I thank her for staying near.

On The Death Of A Man I Already Grieved

Me, around four years old. Smiling for the camera while carrying things no one yet knew.

When my father died, the grief had already passed through me. Not the grief of losing him—but the grief of never having him in the way a daughter deserves.

The loss wasn’t new. It had begun in my late teen years, deepened in early motherhood, and sealed itself the day I realized silence and blame were his only language.

There was harm. He was physically abusive to me—not as a child, but later, as an adult. He broke my nose more than once. He choked me to the edge of unconsciousness. And each time, I was told it was my fault. That I didn’t know when to be quiet. That I pushed too far. That I brought it on myself.

And even earlier, when my uncle molested me, my parents responded the best way they knew how at the time. They found someone—a student counselor they trusted—and sent me to her. But it didn’t help. Later, when I sought true therapy as an adult, my father raged again.

“Leave the past in the past,” he said. As though silence could erase pain. As though survival meant forgetting.

And then, when Becca died, they swooped in — rushing to offer what they called help.

The truth is, I couldn’t help myself in those early days. I was drowning. But their help wasn’t comfort. It was control. The same old patterns, wearing the costume of concern. And soon enough, their version of help shifted into blame. They held me responsible — for her death, for how I had raised her, for daring to walk a different path than the one they wanted me to walk.

That was the final rupture. A day near the first anniversary of Becca’s death. The day I chose distance was the day I chose life. To protect my sons. To protect what was left of me. To begin again.

But not everything was broken. There was one moment I carry still — a memory that lives untouched by all the rest.

When Becca was born, I had planned to release her for adoption. I believe my parents thought it was the best choice. After her birth, she was taken from me immediately. My father never went to the nursery to see her — I learned later he thought it would be too painful.

But a few weeks later, when I chose to bring her home, everything changed. I rode back with the adoption agency representative, returning to my house in the deep cold of a Michigan January. And as we pulled into the long, snowed-in driveway, I saw him waiting.

He stood near the road, afraid the car carrying his granddaughter might get stuck or slide into the trees. He had never seen her face, but as he lifted the car seat from the back seat, he could hear her soft cooing under the blanket. The air was too frigid to pull it back, so he carried her carefully, listening to the little sounds she made as he walked her up through the snow.

In that moment, he allowed himself to love her. In that moment, there was only the simple, pure act of a grandfather carrying his granddaughter safely home.

When word came that his life was ending, my sons gently asked if I wanted to speak with him. If I needed closure. But I didn’t. The closure had already come—not in words, but in the space I had built between us. I think if you had asked him, it was they, my family, who chose to walk away from me. That’s fine. Maybe it was.

When he passed, a distant cousin sent a single heart emoji. That was the message. As I told my sons, my throat tightened—not for him, but for the ache of what never was.

There were no tears. The grieving had been done long before. Those were my son’s exact words. “You grieved him a long time ago mom”.

But as I spoke to each of them I realized this truth: They are fathers now—present, kind, steady. They are everything he could not be for me. Their children know safety. They know tenderness. They know unconditional love.

The cycle ended with them. And in them, something new grows: The kind of fatherhood that heals what once was broken.

Some grief comes like a sudden storm. Some arrive like a drought you’ve already survived. His death was the latter. But my sons — they are the rain that followed. Proof that love can grow where harm once tried to root itself.

And still — I allow for this:

I know his childhood was hard. Maybe he did the best he could. Maybe not. Maybe he simply failed. But wherever he is now — wherever we all eventually find ourselves — I believe the bigger picture is finally clear to him. He sees his mistakes. He sees mine, too.

And I believe this: Becca was there to meet him. Her arms wide open. Because that is who she is.

I hope he has found peace. I truly do.

On The Communion Of Grief

There is a ritual I have come to recognize, and hold dear, among grieving mothers. It is not held in temples or churches or under official signs. It happens in parking lots, across chipped coffee cups, beside hospital beds, in Facebook comment threads at 2 a.m. It happens when you least expect it, but it is entirely appropriate. It happens when one mother says the name of her child, and another doesn’t look away.

Most people do. They look down, or change the subject, or fill the silence with something too bright. I used to take it personally, but now I know—it’s not cruelty. It’s fear. Grief, especially the grief of a mother, terrifies them.

But every once in a while, grief finds someone who understands.

It happened once while I was working the front desk at the clinic. A woman I knew came in, usually bright and chatty, but that day she was unraveling—red-blotchy face, trembling voice. She tried to hold it together just long enough to buy flea prevention for her dogs.

When I asked gently if she was okay, she stammered. Quietly, like a confession, she said: I lost my son. He committed suicide.

Without thinking, I stood up and walked around the counter. I wrapped my arms around her, right there in the middle of the lobby. People stared. I didn’t care. She mattered. Her loss mattered. She needed someone to hold the weight of it with her, even for a minute. She needed to say his name.

I saw her again about a month later. She thanked me for my kindness, but more than that—for not flinching when she said the word suicide.

She told me how much it meant to be able to say her son’s name without watching someone recoil. I nodded, and told her what I know to be true: You deserve to speak his name.

She reminded me of something I already knew but needed to feel again: we carry the need to speak our children’s names like breath.

We tell the story of our child innumerable times. Again and again and again.

Sometimes I only say, “My daughter died in a crash.” Sometimes I say her name and let it hang. Sometimes, when someone really wants to know, I tell them about the poetry, the joy, the light she left behind. I remember one time in particular—we were on a farm, she was around five, riding on the back of a pony while I led it by the reins. I looked back at her. The wind was blowing her blonde hair, her head thrown back, and she was laughing—that laugh. A whole-body laugh. Pure joy. The kind of joy you don’t forget, even after everything else is gone. I want people to know about my daughter. Not just how she died but how she lived.

We are good at listening, too. Knowing what the other person is willing to hear. We don’t need to take that into consideration when talking to another bereaved mother.

With them, we don’t have to scan the room for exits. We don’t have to explain why we still cry years later, or why certain dates crush our lungs. We just speak. And they nod. It’s the rarest kind of ease. Grief without apology.

Not because we’re afraid we’ll forget. Not because we haven’t accepted the death of our child. But because the story is what we have left. It’s how we mother, now. It’s how we include our child in our everyday life still. It’s how we survive.

There’s a rhythm to it—an inhale when we say their name, an exhale when we reach the moment they left. Some of us tell it with clinical precision, like an autopsy report. Others spin it like poetry, fractured and strange. Some cry every time. Some haven’t cried in years. But we all need to tell it.

Because grief unspoken calcifies. Because their life deserves an audience. Because silence is too heavy to carry alone.

When another mother listens—really listens—not with sympathy but with knowing, something sacred passes between us. We become witnesses for each other. We say: Yes, I hear you. Yes, that was real.

Being witnessed doesn’t undo the grief. It doesn’t fix it. But it makes it bearable. It makes it human. It reminds me I’m not just a mother who lost a child—I’m still Becca’s mother. I’m still here.

We are midwives to memories. Midwives don’t just deliver—they guard, soothe, hold steady when the pain comes. So do we. We breathe with each other through the contractions of memory. We place gentle hands on old wounds to remind each other we’re still here, still real. We whisper, You’re not alone. You can do this. I’m right here. And when the story breaks open again, we help gather the pieces, wrap them in warmth, and say, Look. Look what love made.

And in the telling, a tiny burden lifts. The story never gets lighter. But we get stronger from the lifting.

And when I tell Becca’s story—when I speak her name into a world that keeps moving forward without her—I am drawing her back into it. Not as a ghost, not as a shadow, but as a force. A daughter. A person who was and is, because I remember.

Because I say her name.

Because I tell the story

And because I tell it, she remains.

On The Love That Outlives Safety

This photo was taken just hours before her life was taken. I share it not to mourn what was lost, but to honor who she was.

She was five the first time she disappeared. Just long enough for my body to forget how to breathe. Just long enough to taste what it might mean to lose her. I got her back that day. Years later, I wouldn’t.

I was at work when I was told I had an important phone call. Panic didn’t set in until the new babysitter said Becca had never made it to her house after school. This was a babysitter Becca had met her a few times. She’d been at the house once. She was to be dropped off at the front door by the school bus. For whatever reason . . . this failed to happen.

This was the first time I knew: the world would not keep my child safe.

Hurried phone calls were made. From the bus garage I learned the driver had not let my daughter off in front of the babysitter’s house as was the normal protocol. Instead, she let a five year old get off the bus at an intersection more than half a block from where she needed to be. The driver did not tell my child which direction to go. The bus door was shut and the driver pulled away. Leaving a scared confused little girl standing vulnerably at a busy crossroads.

All I could see in my mind was the smallness of a five-year-old girl and the indifference of a school bus door shutting behind her. My hands trembled as I hung up the phone, only to pick it back up and dial the police.

I was frantic. Words spilled out in the wrong order—too many at once, none of them calm. It took a full minute before the voice on the other end could piece together what I was trying to say.

Officers would be dispatched immediately, I was told.

But that didn’t bring peace.

My daughter had been missing for nearly an hour. That meant she’d been wandering—alone, scared—for far too long.

It was a teenage girl who saved her.

Walking home from school, she saw my daughter—small, crying, and clearly lost. She didn’t ignore the scene. She didn’t keep walking. She took Becca’s hand and walked her slowly through the neighborhood, up and down the streets, until they came upon the right house.

A police car was parked out front.

The moment they saw my daughter, they knew it was her. The clothes matched the description I had given them. A puffy pink winter jacket with fur. White boots. She was safe.

Later, Becca told me a man had pulled up in a car and asked her to get in. Said he would help her find the house.

She didn’t get in.

To this day, I don’t know if he meant to help or if something darker lived behind that invitation. I try not to let my mind go there, but it does.

Two hours passed from the time the bus driver let her off to the moment she was found.

Two long hours when it was hard to breathe. Hard to move. Hard to speak.

One hundred and twenty minutes in which I did not know if my daughter was dead or alive. Or whether I would ever see her again.

I got her back that first time.

I wrapped her in my arms and promised she was safe now. That I would never let anything happen to her again.

But safety is a fragile thing. It only stretches so far.

There would come another day. Another phone call. Another stretch of time where I didn’t know if my daughter was dead or alive.

Forty-five minutes. Not as long as those two hours when she was five, but infinitely heavier.

Because part of me already knew.

I knew she was in trouble. I knew it was bad. But until someone said the words out loud—until they confirmed it was her—there was still that small, desperate hope. The kind that gasps for breath. The kind that claws at time. The kind that doesn’t survive the truth.

I kept her safe when she was small. I fed her, clothed her, and taught her to look both ways. But I could not teach the world to love her the way I did. I could not make it hold her life as sacred.

I knew this wasn’t going to end like it had when she was five.

That night, unease wrapped itself around me and wouldn’t let go. I couldn’t name it, but something inside me knew: something was about to happen, and it would change my life. Irreversibly.

The call came in the early morning hours.

But before the phone ever rang, I felt her.

Becca sat on the side of my bed and stroked my leg the way she always did when she wanted to wake me gently. I stirred, confused—why would she have come over in the middle of the night?

I opened my eyes, expecting to see her. Expecting the outline of her body, the glow of the hallway light behind her.

But there was no one there. No shape. No shadow. Only the certainty of her presence.

I could feel her. I could smell her. She had touched me. And I knew.

I sat up in bed, searching for her. But I already knew I wouldn’t find her there.

The air was too still. The silence too loud. And then I looked at the phone. The message light was blinking. That blinking light. It felt like a countdown. Like the final seconds before the world collapsed.

The message was from my parents.

“Becca’s been in a crash,” my mother said, her voice uneven. “And it doesn’t look good.”

I would later learn that another driver had seen the accident and ran to help. He reached the car, saw her, and knew she was beyond help. She was already gone.

He found her phone and pressed redial. The last number she had called. My parents.

I can’t explain why, but I find comfort in that – that one of the last things her phone did was reach for the people who loved her. That someone was there, even for a moment, trying to reach back.

Again, I found myself in a space of time when I didn’t know, for certain, if my daughter was alive.
A stretch of minutes where I held that fragile hope like I had eighteen years earlier, when she was a lost child.

Hope is cruel in those moments. But it’s all we have. Hope keeps you upright, even when it rips through your insides like glass.

It asks you to imagine your child still breathing. And then punishes you when she’s not.

There’s something that happens to a mother’s body when she spends time in that liminal space. Between the not-knowing and the knowing. Between she might still be alive and she is dead.

It rewires you.

Something primal stretches thin. The nerves stay coiled. The heart never really goes back to beating in rhythm with the world.

After the first time, when she was five and lost, I learned that safety is a myth. That all it takes is one careless act – a bus door closing too soon, a turn in the wrong direction—for everything to unravel.

After the second time, when she was killed, I stopped believing the world cared about keeping anyone safe at all.

I walk through life differently now. Suspicion hums under the surface. Joy feels like a dare.
Trust has to be earned in ways I can’t always explain.

The truth is:

Even when everything looks okay – even when the sun is shining and the news is good and the children are laughing – my body is always half-ready to grieve again.

It’s not anxiety. It’s memory. A memory so deep it lives in my marrow.

Because I have stood in that unbearable place where a phone might ring and everything might end.

After she was found at five, I never again assumed she’d be safe just because she was supposed to be. After she died, I never again believed the world had any interest in protecting what I loved.

Grieving mothers wait. We wait for hope to return only to feel it slip through our fingers like mercury – impossible to hold. Impossible to let go.

I’m sorry I didn’t keep you safe my Becca.

But I never stopped loving you with every part of me that remains.

On The Things I Say Instead Of Telling You My Daughter Is Dead

Unfiltered survival. Taken on a night I didn’t know how to keep going—but did anyway. Image credit: Diane Neas

Note to the reader: This piece is about the coded ways grieving mothers speak. It’s about what we say to survive the unbearable, and what we leave unsaid. If you’ve lost a child, I hope this helps you feel less alone. If you haven’t, I hope you’ll read with an open heart.

I have a list of answers I give when someone asks me how I am doing. They vary depending on how close to the surface my grief is that day. Well, truthfully, it’s always just beneath my skin like a bruise that never fades. Press too hard and it pulses to the surface.

I say “fine,” even when I’m not.

I say “hanging in there,” even when I’m unraveling.

I say “stabilized, eating, eliminating”. That is considered a good outcome in the animal world.

I say “living, laughing, loving,” and you laugh, which is the goal—because if you laugh, you won’t ask what I really mean.

I have an entire vocabulary now. Most bereaved mothers have learned this language. One that says just enough to end the conversation, but not so much that it opens us wide.

Because the truth? The truth is that she died. And I didn’t.

And I still don’t know what to do with that.

So instead, I answer in code. I give you the version of me you can handle. I’ve learned to protect your comfort at the cost of my truth. Because if I told you what it’s really like…you would never ask again.

But I’m protecting myself, too. There are days when telling the truth would cause me to implode on the spot. Days when I’m just trying to make it from sunup to sundown. I’m not lying to you. I’m giving myself space to take a breath.

When I say “alive” I mean: unwilling to die even if I wanted to.

When I reply “functional” I mean: still broken but making it through.

When I sarcastically say “living, laughing, loving” I mean: I’m not doing any of those things right now. Or maybe I am, but not in the way you think. Not the Hallmark version. This is survival with a grimace, not a glow. This is gallows humor in a forced lighthearted tone.

So you can laugh, not be uncomfortable and I can stay hidden.

Most people don’t want to know that children die. That love isn’t always enough. If they let it in—even for a moment—it would ruin the myth that our children are safe. That we can protect them. That we’re in control.

As much as I wish that were true… it simply isn’t.

And that truth is so devastatingly huge, so unbearable, that most people have no choice but to ignore it. Because how could anyone live every moment of every day waiting for their child to die?

I live on the other side of that coin. I am waiting for my child to come back to life.

Child loss grief isn’t tidy. It isn’t neat. It’s infinite. All consuming. Not to say other deaths don’t shake us. They do. But the death of a child tears through the center of our lives. It shatters the order we were promised. The order we were prepared to follow.

And our society doesn’t do well with grief, either. Friends, neighbors, coworkers, even well-meaning strangers – they want us to be done with it. They want us back to normal. Quickly. Quietly. Without disrupting the world around us too much. Or, maybe more accurately, without touching their world for any length of time. As if, somehow, child death is contagious.

As if proximity to our sorrow might summon tragedy of their own.

We are the cautionary tale no one wants to hear. The proof that it can happen. The walking reminder that love doesn’t guarantee survival.

We are the poster parents for dead children. We are what happens when the nightmare doesn’t end, when there’s no miracle, no second chance, no waking up.

When the life you lived with your child has come to its unnatural end.

Then comes the quiet aftermath. People stop asking—at least, not in the way they used to.
They stop wondering how you’re doing in this new life. Because they can’t hear it.

To truly listen would make it tangible. And they don’t want to know.

To hear it again—to really hear it—feels heavy to them.
Too much.
Too dark.
Too real.

To ask is to invite the specter of child death into their lives,
as if their own child might be noticed and taken.

We are wreckage that still breathes. We are left in a darkened theater, the spotlight fades, and we clutch our child’s life story to our chest.

Still, we get up. We feed the pets. We answer emails. We smile at the barista. We make it to work. We carry our grief like an extra organ. Heavy, but vital. And we find strange, sacred comfort in others who carry it, too. Not because we’re healing, exactly—but because we’re still here. And being here means something. It has to.

Eventually, people start asking again – but differently. The urgency fades. The specificity disappears. You’re no longer asked how you are in relation to the death of your child. You’re asked the way we ask a dozen people in a single day.

“How are you?”

Like there’s only one possible answer. Like the biggest thing that ever happened to you isn’t sitting right behind your eyes, waiting. So, instead of being honest, we speak in our code. Speaking in code is its own kind of fluency.

And sometimes – on the rare, quiet days – we say “fine,” and it’s almost true.

Not because the grief is gone, but because, for a moment, it isn’t the loudest thing in the room.

And, that too, is survival.

If this resonated with you:
I see you. Whether you’re speaking in code or holding your story in silence, you are not alone. Take your time. Grief has no outline you need to follow.