I disappeared...

A letter on where I have been.

Dear Reader,

I disappeared on you. And I’m sorry.

I want to share a transparent update about where I’ve been.

Allowing myself to fully process my grief for Maggie has done something unexpected. It opened the door to grief I had never let myself feel.

Grief for my childhood. For the family I never had. For a reality I convinced myself was normal for far too long.

Growing up, harmful things happened to me. I won’t go into detail here, but I experienced abuse that no child should have to understand, let alone carry. Like many children in those environments, I was taught to minimize it, normalize it, and believe that I was the problem.

For most of my life, I survived by not fully looking at it.

Recently, that stopped being possible.

Over the past few months, I’ve gone fully no contact with my family. At the same time, memories I had long pushed down have resurfaced, along with intense PTSD symptoms—night terrors, severe sleep disruption, and a level of emotional exhaustion that has made normal functioning difficult.

Because of this, I made the decision to enter an intensive outpatient program for CPTSD.

I am currently in therapy 3–6 hours a day, five days a week. It is the most important work I can be doing right now—and also the most consuming. When I get home, I often only have enough energy to rest.

That’s the reality of where I’ve been.

And it’s why I haven’t been able to show up here in the way I intended—especially for those of you who are paid subscribers.

I want to say clearly: I’m sorry.

You trusted me to provide consistent support, including journaling prompts, and I haven’t met that commitment. That matters to me, and I take it seriously.

While I’m taking a temporary step back from longer letters and book excerpts, I don’t want to leave you without support.

I’ve scheduled a daily grief journaling prompt for the next 30 days.

These prompts are grounded in grief counseling practices and are designed to help you process, integrate, and move through grief in a way that supports your life and your loss.

If you’re here because you’re grieving too, I want you to know this:

You are not falling behind in your healing. There is no timeline you are failing to meet. You can only access what your body and mind are ready to process.

Thank you for being here. Truly.

Jen, Maggie’s Mom