For the parent who can’t stop replaying what went wrong.Dear You,
I know that loop.
The one that starts the moment the house gets quiet.For parents who carry guilt after losing a child.If only I had…
Why didn’t I…
I should have known…Your mind keeps going back, searching for the moment you missed.The word you didn’t say.
The sign you didn’t see.And it feels like if you could just find the right answer…maybe the pain would finally make sense.That kind of ache lives in me too.Here’s something I’ve learned, not from books, but from sitting inside this kind of heartbreak…Guilt doesn’t mean you failed.
It means you loved.Your mind is trying to protect you from the unbearable truth:that sometimes there is no version of the story where you get to save them.So it rewrites the past.It pretends there was a moment you could have changed.Because believing you had control is less terrifying than admitting you didn’t.But you were not careless.You were not absent.You were not trying to harm the person you loved most.You were a parent doing the best you could with the information you had at the time.The mind that blames you now is the same heart that loved them then.
Both can exist.But only one deserves to lead.Tonight, you don’t have to solve anything.You don’t have to forgive yourself.
You don’t have to believe new words yet.Just notice this…If love could have saved them, they would still be here.And the fact that they are not does not mean you failed them.It means this world is cruel in ways no parent is prepared for.You are still their parent.
You are still loving them.
You are still carrying them forward in your heart.Some heartbreak never stops echoing.And you don’t have to walk through it alone.Holding space for you… always.
— Anchored Heart Love®
If this letter felt familiar...
there are more quiet words waiting for you.