For a long time I couldn’t admit this one out loud, because it felt so ungrateful. My daughter was safe. She was home. She wasn’t sick, she wasn’t in danger - by every measure I was supposed to be relieved. And underneath the relief was this heavy, shapeless ache I had no name for and no permission to feel. How do you grieve a child who’s sitting at the kitchen table? What kind of mother mourns a life when her kid is right there, alive and loved? It took me years to understand that what I was carrying had a name. Ambiguous loss - the grief for something that hasn’t ended, that just stopped looking the way you thought it would. It’s the loneliest kind, because there’s no casserole, no card, no one saying “I’m so sorry.” Just you, quietly missing a future that hasn’t happened yet, while everyone around you wonders why you’re not just glad she’s safe. If that’s you - feeling guilty for grieving, grieving in private, certain no one else would understand - I need you to kno...