I became a widow in the dark.
Weeks earlier, I had finally moved out of the FEMA trailer.
It wasn’t a fresh start. It was just another chapter in survival.
No one pulled me to the side and said,
“Are you okay?”
“You don’t have to figure this out alone.”
I made a new partner in the dark, in 2013.
Not with intention, but in response to the weight I was carrying.
One moment of unmatched intimacy, and the direction of my life shifted again.
But not once did someone say,
“Let’s talk.”
“I’ll walk with you through this.”
“I’ll help you see clearly when the world feels blurry.”
No one said,
“You’ve been through enough.”
“You don’t owe anyone your performance of being okay.”
I had a friend who got a luxury car.
She called her friends from the dealership, hype in her voice.
I showed up. In the dark.
I was already behind on what I drove to that lot.
And still, I traded it in.
Left with another debt—26% interest.
No one pulled me aside and asked,
“Why are you doing this?”
“What are you trying to fill?”
People looked at the survivor’s benefits I received for my children and assumed I had it good.
But they didn’t see what it was costing me to stay afloat.
What I was carrying.
What I was trying to unlearn.
It’s taken years for me to admit this:
I didn’t know how to not struggle.
Even when things got better, I’d wait for the ground to drop.
Because that’s what I’d been taught—by experience, not words.
I wonder sometimes—if people from my past ever think about the version of me they encountered.
The one trying to hold it all together.
The one doing what she thought she had to.
The one who needed guidance, not judgment.
Presence, not praise.
There’s so much I wish someone had said.
But now I’m learning how to say it to myself.
And maybe, someone reading this will remember the silence they left behind.
And do better next time—with their sister, their friend, their coworker,
Or the version of themselves they’re still trying to forgive.
If this stirred something in you, let it move you into action.
Be the one who checks in.
The one who sits beside someone in the dark, even if you don’t have the answers.
The one who says, “Let’s talk.”
“I see you.”
“You don’t have to do this alone.”
You don’t need to fix anyone.
But you can choose to show up.
That alone can change a life.
Becoming Whole: My Story of Survival, Motherhood, and Finding Me 