The Angela I use to be

I don’t know why I feel the need to say this, but losing a child is different.

When I lost my son, I lost half of me, and that part is never coming back.

No, I’m not the same Angie. I am very different.

The Angela I used to be is gone, and what remains is a version of myself that I never knew existed. Sometimes I find myself trying to remember who I was before—not because I want to live in the past, but because grief has a way of changing your identity so completely that you begin searching for pieces of yourself that no longer fit.

And no, my life is not some twilight zone.

My son was here.

He lived.

He laughed.

He mattered.

He was deeply loved.

This really happened.

Some days I wonder where I go from here. I keep achieving goals, accomplishing things, and checking boxes that once seemed impossible, yet none of it fills the void. The achievements are real, but so is the emptiness that follows them. I keep trying to find my place again in a world that kept moving after my world stopped.

What makes this journey even harder is that you cannot fully explain it to people who have never experienced it. They listen. They care. They try. But unless you’ve buried a child, there are parts of this pain that words simply cannot translate.

This isn’t grief that ends after a season.

This isn’t a chapter that closes.

This is a journey I will forever be on.

Every day I carry him with me.

Sometimes hour by hour.

Sometimes minute by minute.

I have learned that healing does not mean forgetting. It does not mean moving on. It means learning how to carry unimaginable loss while continuing to live. It means finding a way to breathe when your heart feels broken. It means loving someone who is no longer physically here with the same intensity as when he was.

So I keep pushing forward.

Not because the pain is gone.

Not because I’ve figured it all out.

But because I am his mother.

And even though half of me left with him, the half that remains is determined to honor his life, his memory, and the love that will never die.

This is my reality.

This is my grief.

This is my journey.

And I will carry it for the rest of my life.