Before and After

 Grief began long before my daughter died.

In the final year of Jody’s life,
I cried almost every day.
Somewhere deep inside,
I knew I was standing at the edge
of a darkness I had feared.

My body was weary.
My heart already grieving.

Two weeks before she died,
I wrote her a letter.

In it,
I gave her permission
to live her life as she chose—
not the life I prayed for,
or fought so hard to save.

After eight years of trying
to change what was never mine to control,
I finally loosened my grip.

It was the most painful
and loving thing
I have ever done.

The last time I saw Jody
was Christmas of 2006.

She had just become engaged.
There was laughter that day,
a small and fragile hope
that life might still turn gently.

I remember our final kiss
as she walked out the door.

And I remember the strange thought
that passed through me:

Don’t forget this kiss.

As though my body knew
what my heart could not bear.

Then, on December 30th,
the police stood at my door.

There are moments
that divide a life
into before and after.

The darkness I had feared
had arrived.

My daughter was gone.

And life, as I had known it,
ended that day.

Nothing would ever
be the same again.

Recovery Became my Anchor

When my daughter Jody entered her teenage years,
the mask I had worn for so long
began to crack.

From the outside,
she was thriving—
bright, capable, surrounded by friends.
But beneath the surface,
another story was unfolding.

She began experimenting with drugs.

The terror that rose in me
was ancient and breathless,
the kind that settles deep in a mother’s bones.

When Jody moved three hours away,
I followed as often as I could,
watching helplessly
as addiction tightened its grip.

I sat in emergency rooms
and crisis units,
holding fear in trembling hands,
powerless to fight a disease
love alone could not heal.

This was the one thing
I was afraid to place in God’s hands.

And perhaps what broke me most
were the echoes between us.

Pieces of her story
felt painfully familiar—
abuse, substances, shame,
and dreams slowly slipping from reach.

Watching her struggle
was like catching glimpses
of my own younger self.

I carried guilt.
So did she.

And yet,
even through the deepest heartbreak
of my life,
I stayed rooted in recovery.

I knew something essential:

if I let go of that lifeline,
I would lose myself too.

So while everything around me
felt uncertain,
recovery became my anchor—
the steady ground
beneath a grieving mother’s feet.

A Life that Glimmered

 From the outside,

my life shimmered with beauty.

My husband and I had good careers,
a lovely home,
and all the pieces
that looked like happiness.

But beneath the surface,
I felt numb—
physically, emotionally,
and somewhere deep within,
spiritually.

I carried shame quietly,
along with secrets
I never imagined speaking aloud.

So I did what I knew how to do.

I disappeared into caring for others—
motherhood, marriage,
a well-kept home,
beloved pets,
and endless creative projects
that kept my hands busy
and my heart distracted.

For a while,
it almost worked.

Then came an assignment
while I was earning my associate’s degree:

to create a timeline of my life.

Until then,
I had never journaled,
never learned
how to travel inward.

But placing my life onto paper
brought me to my knees.

The story I had spent years
outrunning
was suddenly sitting before me.

It was my first true surrender
to a God I did not yet understand—
and the quiet beginning
of my recovery.

The Wounded Mother

 Motherhood brought me

a love deeper than language,
a joy I could never have imagined.

And still,
I can see now
that the mother I was then
was deeply wounded.

More than anything,
I wanted to be different
from the parents who raised me.
I wanted to give my children
the safety, tenderness,
and steadiness I had longed for myself.

But recovery was still years away.

I was winging motherhood
while carrying unhealed pain
I did not yet understand.

What began as experimentation
slowly became escape.

Drugs offered relief
from the self-hatred
and buried sorrow
I had carried since childhood.

I was, in many ways,
the perfect soil for addiction—
a frightened heart
searching for silence.

And addiction
took hold of me hard.

Those years were dark—
for my family
and for me.

The dream of becoming
the mother I never had
began to fracture beneath the weight
of my own suffering.

I did not repeat
all the same wounds
I had known growing up.

But I made wounds of my own.

That truth is painful to hold.

And it would take many years—
and much unraveling—
before I could begin
the slow and sacred work
of forgiving myself.

The Search for Safety

It would be many years
before the pieces began to gather
into something I could understand.

Back then,
I blamed myself for everything.

Self-hatred lived quietly inside me,
hidden behind a smile
I had learned to wear well.
No one saw it.
No one knew
how deeply I carried the belief
that something in me was broken.

So I did what I had always done—

I searched for safety
in someone else.

A few years later came husband number two.

He was gentle, kind,
soft in the way of wounded souls.
Almost puppy-like in his tenderness.
But responsibility slipped through his hands,
and substances often held him
more tightly than life itself.

He was not a cruel man.

Like me,
he was carrying wounds
he did not know how to heal.

And so we stayed together
in the uncertain rhythm
of leaving and returning,
two hurting people
trying to build shelter
from unfinished healing.

Then came husband number three—
the father of my children.

He was a good man.
A loving father.
Steady in ways
I had longed for.

And yet,
inside me lived a restless ache
that no marriage could quiet.

I kept searching for a man
who could finally make me feel safe,
not yet understanding
that what I was seeking
had never lived outside me.

The shelter I longed for
was waiting patiently within—
a home inside myself
I had not yet learned
how to enter.