Cracks and All

I am not despite my cracks. I am because of them.

I was broken.

Shattered into a million pieces.

I remember texting my friends from the airport on the way home after William died, using exactly those words. I’m shattered.

That’s how we all felt.

Like William’s death had been a wrecking ball, swinging through our family with one devastating blow, reducing us to dust on the concrete floor. There was nothing left to grab onto. No instructions for how to put ourselves back together. It didn’t even seem possible.

And then, slowly.

Oh, so slowly.

After sleepless nights. After hours every day spent sobbing until I was sure there couldn’t possibly be any tears left. After months and years of therapy, conversations with other bereaved parents, and finding spaces where I could say William’s name out loud and tell the truth about my grief.

The dust began to gather.

Tiny particles started finding one another again.

Not into the person I had been before. That version of me was gone forever.

People often compare healing to kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold. I love that image. But I think mine is different.

I wasn’t glued back together.

I was remade.

Because how could I stay the same after the death of my child?

You don’t witness something so transformational and simply return to who you were. You cannot unknow what you know. You cannot unsee what you have seen.

You are changed.

Forever.

But different does not have to mean worse.

In many ways, I think I have come back better.

More intentional.

A little rougher around the edges.

More honest.

More courageous.

I love more deeply now. I waste less time. I stand more firmly in what I believe. I say the hard things out loud because I know how precious and fragile this life really is.

I never wanted to be broken.

I would undo William’s death in a heartbeat if I could.

But because it happened, without warning and without permission, I had to allow myself to become someone new.

And I like her.

In fact, I’m proud of her.

Sometimes I think of myself as an antique instead of something shiny and new.

Given the choice between a flawless designer piece and an old object that has survived generations, been carried through wars and moves and heartbreak, bearing every scratch and dent as evidence of a life fully lived…

I’ll choose the antique every time.

It has a soul.

It has a story.

And maybe that’s what grief has done to me.

It has left me cracked and weathered and visibly changed.

But those cracks are not evidence that I am weak.

They are evidence that I survived.

I am museum worthy.

Not because I remained untouched.

But because I endured something unimaginable and still found a way to become whole again.

Not the same whole.

A new whole.

Every dent.

Every fracture.

Every scar.

William made them.

And I will wear them proudly.