Grief can be a teacher. Let it teach compassion without forgetting boundaries. Let it remind us that we deserve tenderness and steadiness ...and to give both to those who actually deserve them.

Let this be a cautionary light, not a final verdict. Teach the next generation how to recognize red flags, how to protect their gentleness, and how to keep their hearts whole.

For the ones watching ...our children, our friends, ourselves... there is a quiet gift in the rupture: a living example of what to notice, what to refuse, and how to choose better.

It simply asks us to hold two truths at once: that we are allowed to grieve, and that we can also learn.

You needn’t ask, little one.
Not from me.
I’ll write for you, again and again,
until your mind can breathe,
and your heart feels home again.

So here, my love …let this be your hush,
the soft exhale your soul can rest inside:

You are the poetry I return to when the world goes gray,
the prose I whisper when silence begs for sound.
I would fill your every page with tender hands,
soft vowels, steady rhythm,
the quiet lull of always.

I am ever toward her
because love like this
does not wait idly…
it moves,
it hopes,
it believes

until then,
every breath I take
is a step in her direction
every thought of her
pulls me forward,
closer

…not just in the light,
but in the long shadows
where she's still finding her way...

...without clock or calendar...

...in the verbs of patience,
protection, and poetry...

...I love her

…by staying soft in a hard world,
guarding her peace like a lantern
in a windstorm of noise and judgment...

...by being what doesn’t demand …a harbor, not a hook.
A presence, not a pressure...

...by believing in her becoming,
even when she's unraveling,
even when the map is torn...