Lessons From Loss: What Grief Taught Me About Family, Time, and Truth
Some of us miss those moments to love our children not because we don’t love them…
But because we didn’t understand how to give the right kind of love.
I stumbled upon an old blog and found words I’d written after Sienna passed. Words that reminded me of just how far I’ve come since then:
“There were times Sienna would be wide awake, and I’d be so exhausted I couldn’t keep my eyes open. All I could do was rest my hand on her so she’d know I was there, while I closed my eyes. I’d cry because I wanted to engage her, to look into her eyes, but I physically couldn’t.”
I missed those moments to be present with Sienna because I was disconnected from my own needs and still running under that collapsed archetype of taking care of everything while denying myself what I needed to sustain myself.
Trying to hold it all together…
Terrified of being too much and not enough.
WHERE DOES THIS PATTERN COME FROM?
When I look at how I grew up it was normal for me to feel unsafe because life was chaotic. It was also normal to not be able to ask for help or escape.
When other areas of life then got chaotic and felt unsafe, the body learned to isolate and shut down because asking for help and escaping were not possible.
And even when I was around others, I felt like I was wearing a mask and costume to look “fine” so people wouldn’t run away from me. I wrote this a couple months after she died…
“…it’s difficult for me to share what I'm thinking because I'm afraid to break down in front of people I hardly know. So it seems to them that I'm a bit aloof, but what can I do?”
How many times has the fear of feeling our own big feelings, made us appear to be aloof to others?
How many times has looking “just fine” robbed us of the experience to feel what needs to heal?
It’s not that you’re emotions are too much.
It’s that nobody taught you how to navigate your big feelings as a child.
Or worse, gaslit you out of them and made your responses to fear and lack of connection “the problem”.
It’s not that you’re not enough.
It’s that you were never given enough to thrive in the first place.
THE COLLAPSE
In trying to manage everything, I missed the one thing I needed most: presence—with myself, and with my daughter.
This is one of the most heartbreaking truths I’ve had to sit with. But it’s also one of the most important ones to tell.
Because what I’ve come to understand is that the disconnect I felt with Sienna in those moments—was a mirror of the disconnect I had with myself, and also the remnants of the disconnection I had with my own mother.
Sienna had Trisomy 18, a condition that brought with it immense physical challenges (see a case study of her Psychosomatic Analysis of Health Issues Inside the Sanctuary).
She wasn’t strong enough to breastfeed, and I remember how desperately I wanted to nurse her. I ended up pumping and feeding her through a bottle, and eventually had to finish feeding through her g-tube.
Psychosomatically, I see this now as a reflection of her not being able to fully receive nourishment—not because her body was broken, but because the emotional energy I was holding was so overwhelmed, so ungrounded, so full of fear and shame, that the natural flow of nourishment to her development was interrupted.
She couldn’t latch… because she never got the full emotional connection from me.
She couldn’t hold on… because I was barely holding myself.
And that echoed the subconscious feelings I carried from my birth story.
My mom was already a single mother, 19, couldn’t afford the one child she had, and had an unstable partner. She wasn’t even sure if she was going to keep me, and cried the first several days each time she saw me. Didn’t even try to breast feed me because of previous challenges with my older sister.
I mean talk about a mirror reflection!
That’s a hard thing to say out loud. But it’s also the truth. And if you’re reading this, I share from a place of reverence—from what I’ve learned, and what I now choose to pass on.
THE RESTORATION
We aren’t meant to do this alone.
And yet so many of us are trying to.
Trying to survive parenthood, trauma, grief, healing—all while pretending we’re “fine”.
Trying to keep our families together while falling apart in silence.
Trying to hold everyone else without ever being held.
We think that if we just carry it all ourselves, we’ll spare others the burden. But what my story taught me is that anything I tried to carry alone, I ended up passing on unconsciously.
Through emotional imprinting.
Through energetic overwhelm.
Through response patterns.
This is why I do the work I do now.
This is why I’m rebuilding my connection with my own mother.
This is why I speak openly about things people usually keep hidden.
Because our unspoken stories don’t disappear.
They live in the body.
They shape how we love, how we parent, how we relate. And they pass on—unless we choose to face them.
IF I COULD GO BACK
I wouldn’t try harder.
I wouldn’t be more perfect.
I would rest more.
I would ask for help sooner.
I would accept that the dishes and the errands could wait—but that my daughter’s gaze, her breath, her presence—couldn’t.
HERE’S WHAT I UNDERSTAND NOW:
When we don’t tend to our own needs, we miss the needs of those we love most.
Rest and self-care are not selfish. It’s the soil from which true connection grows.
Having needs is a human thing, and when living on a lifelong deficit, it’s normal to have a lot of needs.
Accepting help from others doesn’t make me less than, it’s part of living in community and caring for each other.
Our children don’t need us to be perfect. They need us to be present.
And presence starts with us.
THIS IS THE WORK OF FAMILY RESTORATION
It’s not just healing backwards—it’s choosing to show up differently now.
It’s grieving what we missed, but not letting that grief become a life sentence.
It’s rewriting the story.
Maybe it’s not that people aren’t around us.
Maybe it’s not that they aren’t offering support.
Maybe the deeper truth is we feel “too much” right now, and can’t communicate it all or what we need.
So we isolate.
If you’ve missed moments too, if it feels “easier” to suffer alone and in silence, please understand: you’re not alone. And it’s not too late.
You are able to reconnect.
With your child.
With your lineage.
With your truth.
And most of all—with yourself.
THIS IS THE REAL SPACE WE GET TO WALK EACH OTHER THROUGH..
The moments we don’t have the answers.
When we do walk away.
When we sit in confusion.
When anger, regret, and bitterness are louder than any sweetness life could offer.
What we need in these moments is for someone to see us in all our mess and still say, “I love you and I am here with you.”
That’s the inheritance I desire to leave. One of connection, compassion, and a new way forward.
BODY LANGUAGE IS THE SPIRIT OF GOD DECLARING:
I’ve always been here with you.
I’ve always been with you.
My heart is always turned towards you.
I’ve always loved you.
THIS IS WHAT BODY ARCHETYPES IS FOR
It’s not just a course. It’s a sacred remembering.
A return to the body as the living archive of your story—and the sacred map to your restoration.
In Body Archetypes, we don’t bypass pain. We meet it with reverence.
We trace the emotions we’ve buried, the needs we’ve silenced, and the patterns we inherited but never chose.
We learn to read the body’s language—not just to understand ourselves, but to stop passing on what we were never meant to carry in the first place.
Because your body is not broken.
Your feelings are not too much.
Your needs are not a burden.
They are the invitation.
To return.
To reclaim.
To restore.
If this blog stirred something in you—if you’ve ever felt the ache of disconnection, the guilt of missing moments, or the exhaustion of carrying it all—Body Archetypes is your space to begin again.
With grace.
With truth.
With others who are ready to heal what the world told them to hide.
This is your invitation to step into presence, into power, and into a new lineage—one where your body becomes your guide, and your healing becomes your legacy.
Come walk with us. You don’t have to do this alone anymore.
