No one warned me that grief could exist alongside so much love.
When my child was diagnosed with autism, I didn’t grieve them. I grieved the stories I had quietly written in my head the milestones, the ease, the certainty. And I felt guilty for it. How could I mourn something when my child was right here, alive and extraordinary?
So, I kept it to myself.
Grief showed up in unexpected ways. In playgrounds where I felt out of place. In birthday parties we couldn’t stay at. In conversations where well-meaning people said, “They’ll grow out of it.”
I learned that this kind of grief isn’t linear. It doesn’t end. It softens, returns, reshapes itself. Some days it’s loud. Other days it hums quietly in the background of our lives.
What helped was allowing myself to name it without shame. To admit that two truths can exist at once: I can love my child fiercely and still feel sadness for the path that is harder than it needed to be. Grief didn’t make me weak.
It made room for honesty.
