08/13/2026
There was a time I wondered how I could ever hold anything bigger than grief.
Every August, I expect myself to be pulled back under by it. But this year has felt... different.
Not because I miss him less. Not because grief has gotten smaller. But because pregnancy, birth, and motherhood have demanded every corner of my heart, my body, and my mind.
For months, I almost felt guilty that grief wasn’t as loud. It wasn’t that my dad wasn’t with me. It was that I didn’t have the capacity to live in both places at once. And yet, motherhood has brought me back to grief in unexpected ways.
The biggest one? Realizing how impossible it is to explain an experience until you’ve lived it yourself.
People can prepare you for pregnancy. For labor. They can tell you how much you’ll love your child. How tired you’ll be. How your identity will shift. But until you’re in it, you don’t know.
Grief has always felt that way, too. No matter how deeply someone loves you, there are parts of it that simply can’t be understood from the outside. You only recognize that landscape once you’ve had to walk through it yourself.
The same has been true of becoming a mom.
And then there was labor. There is one moment I haven’t shared before. During the hardest part, I felt the unmistakable weight of two hands resting on my shoulders.
Heavy. Steady. Comforting. I never looked behind me because, in the moment, it felt completely natural—as if someone was simply there, grounding me.
I didn’t remember it until a few days later, sitting at home with Rocco in my arms.
I suddenly remembered those hands. No one had been standing behind me.
I’ve replayed that moment more times than I can count, and I still can’t explain it. Maybe I don’t need to. I don’t know if my mind gave me exactly what it needed in the hardest moment of my life, I only know that I have never felt more certain that I wasn’t doing it alone (continued in caption)
