“Our sorrows and wounds are healed only when we touch them with compassion.” ~Jack Kornfield
Her absence lingers in the stillness of early mornings, in the moments between tasks, in the hush of evening when the day exhales. I’ve gotten good at moving. At staying busy. At producing. But sometimes, especially lately, the quiet catches me—and I fall in.
Grief doesn’t always roar. Sometimes it’s a whisper, one you barely hear until it’s grown into a wind that bends your bones.
It’s been nearly three years since my daughter passed. People told me time would help. That the firsts—first holidays, first birthday without her—would be the hardest. And maybe that was true.
But what no one prepared me for was how her absence would echo into the years that followed. How grief would evolve, shape-shift, and sometimes grow heavier—not lighter—with time. How her loss would uncover older wounds. Ones that predate her birth. Wounds that go back to a little girl who never quite felt safe enough to just be.
I’d like to say I’ve spent the past few years healing. Meditating. Journaling. Growing. And I did—sort of. Inconsistently. Mostly as a checkmark, doing what a healthy, mindful person is supposed to do, but without much feeling. I went through the motions, hoping healing would somehow catch up.
What I found instead was a voice I hadn’t truly listened to in years—my inner child, angry and waiting. While this year’s whirlwind pace pulled me further away, the truth is, I began losing touch with her long before.
She waited, quietly at first. But ignored long enough, she began to stir. Her protest wasn’t loud. It was physical—tight shoulders, shallow breath, scattered thoughts, restless sleep. A kind of anxious disconnection I kept trying to “fix” by doing more.
I filled my days with obligations and outward-focused energy, thinking productivity might shield me from the ache.
But the ache never left.
It just got smarter—showing up in my body, in my distracted mind, in the invisible wall between me and the world.
Until the day I finally stopped. I don’t know if I was too tired to keep running or if my grief finally had its way with me. But I paused long enough to pull a card from my self-healing oracle deck. It read:
“Hear and know me.”
I stared at the words and wept.
This was her. The little girl in me. The one who had waited through years of striving and performing and perfecting. The one who wasn’t sure she was lovable unless she earned it. The one who held not just my pain but my joy, too. My tenderness. My creativity. My curiosity.
She never left. She just waited—watching, hurting, hoping I’d remember.
For so long, I thought healing meant fixing. Erasing. Becoming “better” so I wouldn’t have to feel the ache anymore.
But she reminded me that healing is less about removing pain and more about returning to myself.
I’m still learning how to be with her. I don’t always know what she needs. But I’m listening now.
Sometimes, she just wants to color or lie on the grass. Sometimes she wants to cry. Sometimes she wants pancakes for dinner. And sometimes, she wants nothing more than to be told she’s safe. That I see her. That I won’t leave again.
These small, ordinary acts feel like re-parenting. I’m learning how to mother myself, even as I continue grieving my daughter. It’s a strange thing—to give the care I long to give her, to the parts of me that were once just as small, just as tender, just as in need.
I’ve spoken so much about the loss of my daughter. The space she once filled echoes every day. But what also lingers is her way of being—her authenticity. She was always exactly who she was in each moment. No apologies. No shrinking.
In my own journey of trying to fit in, of not wanting to be different, I let go of parts of myself just to be accepted.
She, on the other hand, stood out—fearlessly. The world called her special needs. I just called her Lily.
Her authenticity reminded me of something I had lost in myself. And now, authenticity is what my inner child has been waiting for—for so, so long.
Sometimes I wonder if the universe gave me Lily not just to teach her but to be taught by her. Maybe our children don’t just inherit from us—we inherit from them, too.
Her gift, her legacy, wasn’t just love. It was truth. The kind of truth that comes from living as you are.
Maybe her lesson for me is the one I’m just now beginning to accept: that being fully myself is the most sacred way I can honor her.
It’s not easy. The adult in me wants a checklist, a result, a clean timeline. But she reminds me: healing isn’t a destination. It’s a relationship.
It’s a relationship with the past—yes—but also with the present moment. With the part of me that still flinches under pressure. With the softness I once thought I had to abandon in order to survive.
I’m learning that my softness was never the problem. It was the silence that followed when no one responded to it.
She is the key. The key to my own heart.
It doesn’t always come in waves.
Sometimes it’s a flicker, a breath, a quiet knowing that I’m still here—and that they are, too.
My daughter, in the memories that move like wind through my life. And my inner child, in the softness I’m learning to reclaim. In the space where grief and love hold hands, we all meet.
Maybe that’s the lesson she’s been shouting all along: that we can’t truly love others if we abandon ourselves. That within our own hearts—tender, bruised, still beating—lies the key to beginning again.
We can’t mother our lost children the way we once did.
But maybe, in their absence, we can begin to mother the small, forgotten parts of ourselves—with the same love, the same patience, the same fierce devotion.
Maybe that’s how we honor them—not by moving on, but by moving inward.
About Elizabeth Candy
Elizabeth Candy is a writer, mother, and spiritual seeker. She writes about grief, healing, and the journey of coming home to oneself after loss. She believes we can find our way by listening inward and loving the forgotten parts of ourselves. You can read more of her writing at lifeafterlil.blogspot.com, or follow her on Instagram @lifeafterlil.
