There was a point where I truly believed I had finally found my footing. Even with everything that came before and all the uncertainty that never really leaves, it felt like the constant tension in my body had eased. The noise quieted enough for me to hear myself again. Peace wasn’t something I was chasing anymore. It had settled into my days without me noticing, like my body had slowly decided it was safe to exhale.
I didn’t realize how much I had been holding myself together until I wasn’t anymore. My jaw wasn’t clenched all day. My stomach wasn’t constantly tight. I could move through my day without bracing for something to go wrong. I could sit in the sun and not feel restless. I could still do so without feeling exposed. The happiness wasn’t excitement. It was relief. It was my body finally believing it didn’t have to stay on guard every second.
My garden and my kitchen became the places where my heart felt most alive. Where I felt calm and excited at the same time. I loved the physicality of it. Dirt under my nails, but mostly on my gloves. The smell of herbs filled the air when I brushed past them or picked one and carried it with me through the yard. The warmth of the oven. The rhythm of chopping and stirring. Those moments grounded me in my body when so much else in my life used to feel out of control.
In my garden, especially, I felt connected to something deeper than myself. I felt my grandma there. I felt generations of women who made homes, fed people, and grew things with their hands. It felt instinctual, like I was honoring them without even trying. Like I was finally living in a way that would have made them proud. I wasn’t searching for meaning. I was inside it.
And now there is another loss layered into everything else, and it cuts deeper than I expected.
I used an image to describe how I feel because words kept failing me. I already know how spring will feel. The Mother’s Day garden my kids made for me will bloom without me there to see it. Their hands in the soil. Their careful measuring and digging. Their excitement. Their love. The circular bed will fill in. The flowers will rise. The spinner will turn in the wind. Life will keep moving, just without me in it.
The lavender I carried home from Traverse City, the lavender I nurtured and protected, will grow tall. I can picture it swaying in the breeze. I can almost hear the bees, feel the air thick with that familiar scent, and remember how excited I was last year when I harvested it for the first time. After that, I bought more. I was careful about where I got it from, researched the different varieties, moved them again and again until everything felt balanced and symmetrical.
The rosemary I hand-picked, grew, and used in my cooking and breads. The peonies Jacob bought for me for Mother’s Day. The bulbs I planted late last fall, kneeling in cold soil with hope I didn’t even realize I was holding, will burst into color. All of it will be beautiful. All of it will be enjoyed by someone else.
That realization sits heavy in my chest in a way I can’t shake.
This isn’t just one loss. There are many, stacked on top of each other. Leaving behind the wood on the bedroom wall from my grandparents’ barn feels like losing a daily anchor. This wood stood for over a hundred years. It greeted me every morning. It held me at night when everything felt too much. Soon, it won’t be there to meet me anymore.
At the same time, I’m still trying to make sense of my relationship with my own body. I’m still grieving the loss of autonomy. The loss of control. The loss of feeling fully at home inside myself. My identity feels fragile. I thought I had finally found it. I thought I had arrived somewhere solid, somewhere that would hold me.
Now it feels like it’s dissolving, as if it was never real at all. What’s left behind is an emptiness that feels physical. The kind that sits in your chest and makes it hard to imagine being filled again.
People talk about starting over. About planting a new garden somewhere else. About recreating what was lost.
But this isn’t just about the garden.
It’s about everything it represented. The life I was building quietly. The routines that made me feel steady. The future I could see forming in front of me, not fully here yet, but close enough to touch. Close enough to trust.
So this is where I am. Grieving places, routines, textures, smells, and the version of myself that finally felt at home. Grieving the things that hadn’t happened yet but felt within reach. Grieving a life that was taking shape slowly, gently, and then disappeared before I could step fully into it.
I don’t have perspective yet. I don’t have a lesson. I only know that what I loved was real. What I was building mattered. And this grief exists because something meaningful once lived here.
Perfectly Imperfect 
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