After my daughter's needs became clear, time moved differently. It wasn't slower, exactly—it was heavier. Every moment felt like it had to count for something.
I was still in my corporate job. Still on the treadmill, still the person everyone counted on to keep things moving forward. But I was also living in two worlds: the professional one where I showed up and kept my game face on, and the one at home where I was learning what it meant to be present for someone in a different way than I'd ever had to be.
My husband was there too, doing his own healing after surgery. Odin and Frey followed me from room to room, their little feet tracing the shape of my days. Even Cairo, my large and usually self-possessed boy, stayed close enough to touch. Animals know when a household has changed before anyone finds the language for it.
I remember thinking about the women I wanted to write about. Not yet consciously—it was more like a whisper in the back of my mind. These women who'd built lives, and then life changed on them without asking permission, and they had to figure out who they were in the aftermath. I didn't know why I was drawn to that story. I think I did, though. I think I was already living it.
That year was about holding on. Holding on to routine. Holding on to my daughter, to my marriage, to the version of my life that made sense before everything got rearranged. And underneath it all, this quiet voice asking: What comes next? And can I build it myself?
I didn't know then that the answer would come with a severance letter, a lot of prayer, and the terrifying freedom of having nothing left to lose but fear.