Welcome to Life After Lil

​ This week my husband flew to Denver to visit our daughter, and I stayed home. After losing Lily, these kinds of split trips carry their own quiet layers — love for the child who is here, longing for the one who isn’t, and the strange reality of how a house can feel both too full and too empty at the same time. This was my week alone in it. And if I’m honest? I loved having the house to myself. There’s something about being alone in your own space that lets you hear your own energy again. When you live with other people—even people you love deeply—your energy blends. Which is beautiful… and also a lot. The first morning, I dropped him at the airport at 4 a.m. and crawled back into bed. I slept until 10. Stayed in my pajamas all day. Ate Kraft mac and cheese—a childhood favorite—and watched my guilty pleasure reality shows. It felt indulgent and simple and exactly right. The next day, I swung the other direction: visited my mom, lunch with a friend, dinner at Mary’s. I left...

​ To My Dearest Lily It’s been three years since you left this world, and not a single day has passed when I haven’t thought of you—craved your little hand in mine, remembered the way your bright blue eyes sparkled, or felt that familiar lift inside me when you smiled. You brought so much life into our lives, and in your absence the silence has become its own presence. People say absence makes the heart grow fonder, but that word fonder doesn’t come close to what I feel. I crave you the way a sweet tooth aches—an ache that can never be satisfied. And yet I know, unequivocally, that you are not gone. You have simply transformed. I feel you. I receive your signs. I know when you are near because joy rises in me at the same time sorrow pulls at me—love and grief braided together. It hurts, but I’ll take that ache as a substitute for your presence. Some days, it’s enough. Today, it was. And I’m grateful. I’ve had to learn how to live without you these last three years, just as I once...

💬  Remembering the Child I Never Got to Hold Pregnancy loss is a quiet kind of grief — especially when the world expects you to move on. It’s the kind of sorrow that doesn’t always get space, words, or recognition. Nearly 30 years after my miscarriage, an unexpected message from the other side opened a door I didn’t even realize I had shut. This is that story. 🔮  A Message from the Other Side When I had a medium reading back in April, my daughter came through — clear, sweet, sassy, and just as charming as ever. But this time, she mentioned someone I hadn’t thought about in years: her brother. The one I miscarried in 1996, at 20 weeks pregnant. It was just a passing mention — but it landed like a stone dropped into still water. 👶  Pregnant, Young, and Full of Hope I was 23 or 24 — young, hopeful, and pregnant for the first time. From the beginning, something felt off. Two embryonic sacs. Genetic counseling. Tests upon tests. Worry weighed heavy. And then came the moment...