Even when they belong to someone else’s story
I have received so many messages since I started writing about this chapter of my life. More than I ever imagined. More than I would actually wish for. Because it means there are many people living through similar pain. Many mothers. Many fathers. Many children caught in changes they never chose. And that saddens me.
At the same time, I have to admit it brings me some comfort too. Maybe that sounds selfish. But it is human. Because there is something profoundly lonely about a separation when you have young children. Especially when everything is still so recent. And realizing that there are people who not only understand what I write, but truly feel it themselves… makes me feel less alone. Less “crazy” in the middle of all this pain.
A few days ago, a follower sent me something her son had said. A simple sentence. A small one. But ever since I read it, I have not been able to get it out of my head.
“If you have a baby, will the baby stay with you and I go to Dad’s?”
The moment I read it, I felt an immediate knot in my chest. Because this is it. There are so many layers to separation when children are involved that people on the outside cannot even imagine them.
We are not only grieving the person we lost. Or the relationship that ended. It is not just that. Nor are we only grieving the separation from our children, which remains, for me, the hardest pain of all.
There are other silent griefs that appear along the way. Small ones. Almost invisible ones. They seem insignificant beside the enormous losses… yet they are still there. Existing. Hurting. Asking for space inside us. And I think one of them is the grief for the family we imagined. The life we thought we were going to have.
I wanted to have three children. I already had names tucked away. Ideas. Little dreams I was quietly building. I could already picture the family dynamic. The chaos around the dinner table. The seats in the car. The bedrooms. The holidays. Our home full of life. Our three children.
And until not so long ago, I genuinely believed it would happen. I thought that in a year or two we might be trying again. But then life changes completely. And suddenly I find myself grieving someone who never even existed. A child who was never born… yet whose absence I somehow already feel. And that is a strange thing to explain. Because when we are living through such a great loss, some griefs happen almost in secret. In the background. As though we do not have the right to feel them because there are “more serious” things happening. But the truth is that they still exist.
Today, honestly, I cannot imagine myself with someone else. I cannot imagine a new relationship. Much less another journey into motherhood. Maybe one day it will happen. I do not know. But even when I try to picture that possibility… it always comes with new questions and new pain. Because then I think: what about my children? How would we navigate that emotionally? How do you explain to two children who spend half their time away from their mother that a sibling could be with me every day? How do you explain to one child that there are nights when he has to leave… but another child stays? There are so many layers to these things. So many more than what people see from the outside.
And maybe that is what this little boy’s sentence brought home to me so powerfully. The realization that, even at such a young age, children think about these things too. They are trying to understand their place in the middle of all these changes. They are afraid of losing space. Losing comfort. Losing their sense of belonging. And we, as parents, are trying to survive through all of it while grieving losses we never even knew existed. The grief of lost love. The grief of family. The grief of routine. The grief of no longer having our children with us every day. And sometimes even the grief of dreams that never had the chance to happen.
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