In the Middle of a Quiet Undoing
Six months after losing my daughter, I’m living in the tension between what has changed and what hasn’t. Life has found a rhythm again on the surface, but beneath it, grief has reshaped me in ways I didn’t choose. It has stripped away old patterns, redefined my capacity, and changed how I move through relationships. This is my honest reflection on what it takes just to keep going, and who I’m becoming as loss continues to rewrite what matters.
Garment of Grief, Garment of Grace
The grief of a grandparent is unique. You have the emotions of loss for your grandchild and the hopes and dreams you had for her. But on top of that loss is another level of grief that is absolutely heart-wrenching. The pain of watching your child suffer through the loss of their child is unspeakable.
In the Middle of the Dress She Never Wore
There was a time when folding her clothes felt like preparing for something certain.
I remember sitting in her nursery, taking my time as I put each piece away. It wasn’t just about organizing or getting ready; it felt like I was participating in her life before she even arrived. Every outfit carried a small, quiet assumption: she will wear this. Not all at once, not in some grand, emotional way, but in the steady rhythm of ordinary days I hadn’t yet lived.
In The Middle of Holy Week
We move so quickly through Holy Week. We move from palm branches to the cross, from grief to resurrection, from Friday to Sunday, often telling the story as if its meaning depends on how efficiently we can arrive at hope. It is as though the ending is the point, as though everything is meant to resolve as quickly as possible.
But there is a day in the middle that resists that kind of movement. It is a day where nothing is resolved, nothing is explained, and nothing is redeemed – at least not yet. It is the day after everything falls apart.
I did not understand that day until I began living it.
In the Middle of Missing Her
There are these quiet moments that catch me off guard, even though by now I should expect them.
Like the photo on the wall by my bedroom door. It sits right at eye level, so I don’t even have to try to see her. I pass it every morning when I’m still half awake, and every night when I’m tired enough to just crawl into bed and be done with the day. Most of the time I let myself glance and keep moving, because I’ve learned that if I linger too long, it can unravel more than I’m ready to carry in that moment.
In the Middle of Family Who Mean Well
Grief does not just change how you feel, it changes how you exist in every room you walk into, especially the ones filled with people who have known you the longest, loved you the most, and still somehow don’t quite know what to do with the version of you that came back after loss.
In the Middle of Mothering the Child Who Got To Stay
There is something about loss that rewrites the way you mother the child who is still here.
Before, I loved my son with the ordinary, overwhelming love that I’d say most mothers know. The kind that wakes up early for pancakes shaped like ice cream cones and spends evenings chasing a toddler through the house with a bath towel. The kind that kisses scraped knees and tucks blankets just right.
In the Middle of Five Months
Five months.
Half a year is almost here, and somehow that feels impossible to say out loud. Time after loss does something strange. It stretches and folds in ways that make no sense. On paper, five months have passed since our daughter went to be with Jesus. Five months since the doctor quietly told us there was no heartbeat. Five months since the world split cleanly into before and after.
In the Middle of Faith That Feels Fragile
Grief can strip faith down to its barest bones.
Before we lost Haven, I thought my faith was steady enough. I knew the right verses, sang the worship songs without hesitation, and believed, in theory, that God was good in every season. But if I’m honest, even before this loss my faith wasn’t as strong as it probably should have been. I feel ashamed admitting that. I loved God, but there were parts of my faith that were comfortable, routine, and mostly untested.
In the Middle of Postpartum Without a Baby
No one prepares you for postpartum without a baby.
They prepare you for sleepless nights and cluster feeding. For diapers and swaddles and the dizzying love that makes the exhaustion holy. They prepare you for healing “because your body just did an incredible thing.” But no one tells you what it is to heal when your arms are empty.
In the Middle of Fresh Grief
Four months ago, I gave birth to a baby who did not cry. There are sentences that split your life into a before and an after. That is one of mine…