Tag: struggle

Things No One Said: Part 2

Cast Aside

No one said that grief wouldn’t be the hardest part.

No one said the real heartbreak might come from the living.

When I became a widow at 35, I expected sorrow. I expected silence at night. I expected missing him.

What I didn’t expect was to be discarded, not just by death, but by family.

I learned my husband had left nothing for the girls, including me. His mom, the named beneficiary, looked at me, when I asked her what she planned to do, and said,

“If he wanted your name there, he would have put it.”

That sentence still haunts me. Not for what it said, but for what it didn’t care about.

I watched her upgrade her home while my daughters and I tried to recover from a hurricane the year before; still missing doors, still patching up what we could. Still broken.

And still I showed up. I forced my children to visit her. I thought proximity might build something back. I thought pretending might make it real.

Until I couldn’t pretend anymore.

It was another trauma, another mother figure casting me aside. It didn’t matter that I had her grandchildren. It didn’t matter what we had been through.

And just like that, the isolation closed in.

I was estranged not only from her, but from my own mother. From my siblings. From his siblings.

1.5 years after becoming a widow, I wasn’t just grieving a husband, I was grieving the whole web that should’ve caught me.

But no one said that part.

No one said that loss could echo louder when you’re still breathing.

From 5 to 50. Fall is coming.

Things No One Said

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.

Summer 2008, flew my girls to Disney World. Today, I still wear that Coach Fanny pack. Alex still keeps her hair in a bun, Eb keeps tshirts on, and Syd still carries a tote.

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.