Holding the Unthinkable: A Mother's Journey Through Grief

Entry one: The day everything broke 

Before this happened, my daughter existed in my world in the way children do — fully, loudly, imperfectly, beautifully.

She had a room that looked like a teenager’s room.

She had opinions. Moods. A presence that filled space even when she was quiet.

She was thirteen — still becoming, still forming, still needing protection in ways I didn’t yet understand would haunt me.

She was being bullied.

She was struggling with depression.

She was carrying more than a child should ever have to carry.

And I did not know that the weight had already become too much.

The moment we found her, everything in me broke at once.

There was no transition.

No processing.

No gradual realization.

My body reacted before my mind could form a single complete thought.

I thought she was already dead.

That belief hit me instantly — not as an idea, but as a full-body collapse. My legs gave out. My breath disappeared. My chest seized like it was being crushed from the inside. I remember making sounds that didn’t feel like they were coming from me — sounds pulled straight out of terror and love and disbelief.

I couldn’t think.

I couldn’t breathe properly.

I couldn’t slow myself down.

I was a fucking mess.

There was no calm.

There was no “stay strong.”

There was only a mother in absolute freefall, staring at her child and believing, in that moment, that life had already ended.

Grief did not arrive gently.

It arrived like a physical attack.

Grief was screaming.

Grief was gasping for air.

Grief was my nervous system completely overwhelmed, firing in every direction at once.

People talk about grief like it’s sadness.

This was not sadness.

This was terror mixed with love, crashing through my body with nowhere to land.

Everything after that moved fast, but inside me, time fractured.

I remember fragments — hands moving, voices speaking, urgency everywhere — but my mind was not tracking details. It was locked onto one unbearable truth:

This is my child.

This cannot be happening.

Please don’t let this be real.

We were rushed to the hospital. And even then, I wasn’t convinced she was alive. My body stayed in that first moment — the moment where I believed I had already lost her — even as the world around us tried to save her.

Hope didn’t feel like hope yet.

It felt desperate.

It felt frantic.

It felt like clinging to something slippery while everything else collapsed.

This is what grief was in that moment:

Grief was my body refusing reality.

Grief was my heart trying to stop time.

Grief was the terror of a mother who believed she was already too late.

I did not know yet that the next days would stretch into something even more unbearable.

I did not know yet that machines and waiting and impossible decisions were coming.

I did not know yet that grief would deepen and change shape again and again.

All I knew was that my daughter — my child — was lying in front of me, and my entire being was screaming that this was not how her story was supposed to go.

And in that moment, nothing else existed.

That was the moment everything broke.

Not later.

Not over the next few days.

Not when doctors started talking in careful language.

Right there.

In the instant my body believed my daughter was already gone.

Whatever came after — the hospital, the transport, the waiting — did not feel like a continuation of life. It felt like being carried forward without consent, while my body stayed behind in that room, on that floor, unable to breathe.

This is where my story fractures.

This is where time stops making sense.

This is where I stop recognizing myself.

This is where grief takes my entire body hostage.

Nothing about this moment had meaning yet.

Nothing was being learned.

Nothing was being integrated.

There was only a mother and her child.

Only terror.

Only love.

Only the unbearable realization that life had already split into before and after — even though I didn’t yet know what “after” would demand of me.

This is where it begins.

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Gentle note to readers

This entry speaks openly about suicide, parental grief, and crisis. If this brings up heavy feelings or thoughts of harming yourself, please reach out for immediate support. In Canada, call or text 988 for 24/7 mental health support. If you’re elsewhere, local crisis lines or a trusted adult can help you through the moment.