I did not choose this life. Let me say that first.
I did not choose to lose my son or have my sense of self shattered and rebuilt. I didn’t choose the years of searching, sitting with unnamable feelings, or the slow, uneven, often painful process of becoming someone I no longer recognized.
But I have chosen what to do with it. Every day, I choose what to do with it.
Looking back—further along than I ever imagined—I can see what was hidden while I was inside it: an architecture, a purposeful shape to becoming.
The loss shattered me, revealing the most authentic part of myself that had been building up beneath the surface for my entire life, waiting for the shell to break. What poured in through those cracks was grace: teachers arriving when needed, books opening to the right page, women with their own losses forming a community who understood me, and work rising from grief—not despite it but because of it.
None of this was in my plan. All of it was, I have come to believe, in my soul’s plan. I’m not expecting you to believe that now. If you’re in the fire, you’re probably thinking it’s a remark from someone who has forgotten what it feels like. I haven’t forgotten. It will stay with me forever.
If you’re in a later stage of grief after years on this journey and starting to see your future self, I encourage you to trust what you’re beginning to see. Your soul has been building something, even if you don’t know what it is. You sense it—the feeling that this wasn’t random, and that the loss wasn’t a detour but the path itself.
That is your soul, telling you what it knows. Listen.
If you’re further along than you expected to be — what do you see now, looking back?”