The Q life Grief Journey

As 2025 came to a close, I found myself looking back at a year I never could have imagined, a year that changed me in ways I am still discovering.

This was the year I learned how fragile life truly is.
The year I learned how strong love can be.
The year I learned what it means to lose a child and still wake up each morning.

2025 was not a year of milestones or celebrations. It was a year of endurance. Of showing up when my heart wanted to hide. Of learning how to breathe, how to sit with silence, how to live inside a grief that did not ask permission.

It was the year Quinten went on hospice.
The year we walked him to the edge of life and stayed with him until the very end.
The year I learned that loving your child sometimes means letting them go.  The hardest lesson a mother can ever face.

There were moments in 2025 that will forever be etched into me:
the quiet days of caregiving,
the conversations that mattered more than anything else,
the moments of fear and hope living side by side,
and the day my world changed forever.

And then, in August, just one month after Quinten passed away, baby Everett was born.

His arrival did not erase the grief.
It did not soften the loss.
But it placed life and death side by side in a way I wasn’t prepared for.

Holding Everett for the first time, my heart felt both broken and full. I grieved the uncle he would never know in this world, even as I marveled at the miracle of new life. His tiny breath, his warmth, his quiet presence felt like a reminder that life continues not because we are ready, but because it always does.

Everett’s birth taught me that grief and love are not opposites. They can exist in the same moment, in the same body, in the same heart. One does not cancel the other. They simply make room for one another.

This year stripped away everything unnecessary. It clarified what matters and what never did. It taught me that time is not guaranteed, that love is not gentle, and that grief does not move in straight lines.

2025 also taught me something unexpected: that joy can exist alongside heartbreak. Not loud joy. Not careless joy. But small, tender moments that arrive quietly and remind me that life is still happening around me.

There were glimpses of warmth, family gathered, grandbabies laughing, shared meals, quiet conversations, moments where Quinten felt close in ways I can’t explain. Those moments did not erase the pain, but they softened it just enough to keep me going.

Looking back, I don’t see 2025 as a year to be celebrated or forgotten. I see it as a year that reshaped me. A year that demanded more of me than I ever thought I could give and somehow, I did.

I am not the same person I was at the beginning of 2025.
I carry more weight.
More wisdom.
More tenderness.

And more love than I knew my heart could hold.

As I move forward, I do so slowly. Gently. With no expectations of who I should be or how quickly I should heal. I carry Quinten with me, not as a memory that fades, but as a presence that continues to shape my days.

2025 will always be the year that broke my heart.
But it will also be the year that showed me how life and loss can exist side by side, how love can stretch across generations, and how even in the deepest sorrow, it does not disappear.

I walk into 2026 changed, tender, and still loving.
And that, for now, is enough.