🌙 WEEK 2 — After My Mother Died: The First Betrayal

Healing Journey Series — From Darkness to Light

When my mother died, the world didn’t just become quiet — it became unfamiliar.

I was only 8 years old when everything I knew disappeared overnight.

And instead of being surrounded with love, safety, or comfort, my life shifted into something none of us were prepared for.

My brothers and I were sent to live with our grandparents — my mother’s parents.

That house should have been a refuge.

But it became the beginning of a different kind of pain.

The first blow came fast:

we were separated.

My brothers — the only pieces of home I had left — were taken away from me.

My stepdad, the man who raised us since I was a baby, wasn’t allowed to visit.

I didn’t understand it at the time, but the message landed deep:

You’re alone now.

No one talked about my mother after that.

Her name, her memory, her love — all of it vanished as if she had never existed.

It felt like losing her all over again, but this time in silence.

I wrote her letters constantly.

Long letters, short letters — anything that made me feel like she could still hear me.

I didn’t know she was gone forever.

A part of me believed she had abandoned me like everyone else… because no one told me otherwise.

No one explained death to a child who was desperate to understand why everyone she loved kept disappearing.

This was also when something even darker began.

Adults who should have protected me, hurt me.

People who were supposed to care for me, abused their power.

And when I tried to tell the truth, I was called a liar.

I was told to be quiet.

I was told to “stop making trouble.”

The innocence I’d held in my mother’s home was gone.

The safety she wrapped around me was gone.

The warmth I grew up with was gone.

And the little girl who once picked blackberries, played games, and felt safe in her mother’s arms…

was replaced by a child who learned to survive instead of live.

This was the second loss of my life —

the loss of safety.

The loss of protection.

The loss of the world I thought I belonged to.

But today, as a grown woman with years of healing, therapy, and inner work behind me, I look back at that 8-year-old child with love — not shame.

She survived without guidance.

Without love.

Without protection.

Without adults who cared enough to listen.

And yet she held on.

She fought.

She endured.

She kept breathing.

She kept hoping.

She kept looking for light.

She is the reason I became the woman I am.

She is the foundation of my strength.

And she is the part of my story I honor the most.

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💫 Takeaway:

The world may take away the people who love us, but the strength they planted inside us always remains. My mother’s love carried me long after she was gone — even when the rest of the world tried to silence my truth.