The Grand Canyon
Am I allowed to write it out yet
I keep feeling the pull to write about the deepest caverns of loss—the kind you don’t just live through, but carry inside your body forever.
The story of learning what the words ‘compounded trauma’ meant in a therapists office as I was explaining the things my older sister inflicted during the most fragile days of our lives.
The part about my own mother.
The chapters I’ve never spoken aloud, but that carry just as much weight as the death of Valor itself.
The CPS reports.
The lies—accusations that Justice had murdered our son.
The attorney we had to hire for $10,000, only days after leaving the hospital without our sons body, because we didn’t know what would happen next—especially after my sister had already filed her first retaliatory CPS report against us just months before.
The Reddit threads.
The screenshots.
The letters sent to churches, family, friends—spreading poison faster than we could contain it.
The absolute insanity we endured.
The days I felt my mind splintering under the weight of it all, certain I might end up in a psych ward from the sheer and utter devastation.
But every time I sit down to write about the specifics—his life, his death, the aftermath—I feel this weight press down on me. A heaviness that wasn’t there in the early days of grief, when the words poured out like water.
Now it’s as though I’m dragging them from the bottom of a lake.
It’s not just emotional. It’s physical. Exhausting. Like the sheer mass of the story might crush me if I try to carry it again. To relive it with full memory, to pen it with the kind of clarity and poignancy it deserves—it takes everything out of me.
And that defeats me. Because this is my story. But more than that—the deepest, darkest parts are what make God's hand in it all unmistakable. The miracle isn’t just in the healing—it’s in how far He’s actually had to carry us through the wreckage.
Sometimes when I even try to reach for the memories, they don’t come. I know the broad strokes, the overarching theme. But when I try to dig through the catalog of my mind for details, it’s like pulling up corrupted files—Error: File Not Found.
Maybe it’s the postpartum fog. Maybe it's the weight of raising so many kids while trying to keep a business, other souls and my own—alive. Maybe it’s what trauma does to a brain—bludgeons it. Scrambles it. Makes it forget to protect itself.
And I’m afraid. I’m afraid that the further I get from the days of his life and death, the more it will all fade. I want to remember it like it was yesterday, even if it hurts like absolute freaking hell.
I want to recall the smell of the hospital. The sounds of the machines. The ‘Room 6’ On the wall- The surreal buzz in my brain as I hovered above myself, watching my own arms cradle my baby for the last time.
Without my mom.
“Where’s my mom? Someone call my mom—we’re about to unplug him.”