Little miracles

Photo by sixteen miles out

The holidays arrive whether you are ready or not.
They do not knock. They do not ask what you have buried.
They come with their lights already switched on, their music already playing, their insistence that joy is mandatory and grief should be tidy, seasonal, discreet.

I am a mother of a living child and a child who never learned the sound of my voice from outside my body.
My baby died still, before breath, before first cries, before the world could be told to slow down.
2013 should have cracked the earth open.
Instead, the earth stayed whole. The sun rose. People kept going. Life—unashamed—continued.

That is the first violence of grief:
Not the loss itself, but the way the world refuses to stop spinning in its wake.

Holidays sharpen this truth.
Tables fill with food while some chairs remain permanently empty.
Children grow older than the siblings they never met.
Calendars cheerfully flip forward, indifferent to the fact that your life cleaved itself into before and after years ago.

I have lost so many since then.
Not one clean grief, but a stacking—layer upon layer—until sorrow became atmospheric.
It entered everything.
Even joy arrived carrying an apology.

People say time heals, but time only teaches you how to carry what cannot be healed.
You learn how to wrap gifts with hands that once trembled in disbelief.
You learn how to smile for photos while silently counting who is missing from the frame.
You learn how to be both present and shattered, grateful and aching, alive and endlessly grieving.

Grief does not leave for the holidays.
It sits beside you as you decorate the tree.
It watches you sing carols you used to love.
It reminds you—gently, cruelly—that love does not die just because the body does.

And yet—
Somehow—you keep going.

You wake up.
You live.
You breathe.
You show up.
You survive another December.

Not because you are strong in the way people like to say,
but because love never taught you how to quit.

The world keeps spinning, yes.
But so do you.
Carrying the names no one else says out loud.
Carrying a love that includes absence.
Carrying grief that is not seasonal, not temporary, not something to “get over.”

If this season feels heavier, it is because it is.
Because memory glows brighter against festive lights.
Because silence is louder when joy is expected.

And still—
You are here.
You are remembering.
You are loving.

That, too, is a kind of miracle.

It’s the last day of the year and you made it. What little miracle, of your own making or not, can you celebrate? In what ways are you here, remembering, loving?

At GITW we see you, we abide with you, we remember, love and celebrate with you, and we walk beside you into the new year.