I lost my Daughter in 2022.
Her name is Nikki.
She was my second child, born into a family of six, and she was also my friend. One of my closest.
Nikki was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at 15 months old. From that moment on, her life required vigilance, strength, courage most people never see. She carried that weight quietly and lived fully anyway.
She was 37, just 2 weeks shy of her 38th birthday, when my world split open.
The devastation of losing a child is Indescribable. There are no words that can carry it's full weight. There's no comparison that fits. There is no "strong enough" or "faithful enough" to make it hurt less.
You don't just lose a child, you lose the future you imagined, the phone calls that should have happened, the shared laughter, the quiet understanding only a mother and a daughter know.
You lose your footing in the world.
I'm a woman of faith. That faith did not spare me this loss. It did not shield my heart. But it did hold me when I could not hold myself.
I also had to keep going, for my other children. They did not just lose a sister. They lost their Nikki. And I carried the weight of their grief alongside my own.
In my pain, i made some poor escape choices. I was trying to survive something unbearable. I'm not proud of those choices, but I understand them now.
Grief is not neat. It is not linear. It does not ask permission before it breaks you.
I am back on track now, not healed, not whole, but facing the grief instead of running from it. Learning how to live with it instead of against it.
I meet people, placed in my path by what I feel is the Lord, who have lost two children. I can't imagine that pain. And yet, I recognize the look in their eyes. The strength that comes only from surviving what no one should have to survive.
Each day is a struggle to face a world without your child in it. Somebody are quieter than others. Some days are louder. But the ache never leaves.
And this is one of the reasons I write.
I'm right because love does not disappear when someone dies. I write because grief needs a place to land. I write because there are others walking this road who need to know they are not weak, broken, or faithless for hurting this much.
I write because Nikki mattered. Because she still does. Because love deserves words, even when words are not enough.