The Space Where You Should Be

There is a kind of pain I carry that I don’t often speak out loud, not because it isn’t there, but because it is so deep it feels almost sacred. It’s the kind of pain that doesn’t come and go—it stays. It settles into the quiet places of my heart and becomes part of how I move through the world. No one will ever fully understand what it feels like to love a daughter who walked out of my life eighteen years ago. People may try to imagine it, may try to offer comfort, but unless you’ve lived this kind of absence, you can’t quite grasp the way it lingers, the way it reshapes everything without ever fully showing itself.

Eighteen years is a long time. Long enough for so many things to change, for life to move forward in ways I never expected, for seasons to come and go without her in them. But there is something that has not changed, something that has remained untouched by time, untouched by distance, untouched by silence. I still love her. I have never stopped loving her. Not for a single day. That love didn’t leave when she did. It didn’t weaken or fade. If anything, it has become something deeper, something quieter, something that lives in every memory and every unanswered question I carry.

I think about her more than anyone realizes. In small moments, in ordinary days, in the spaces where my mind drifts when everything else is still. I wonder how she is, what her life looks like, whether she is happy, whether she ever thinks of me. I wonder if she remembers the love that we had, if she ever feels it the way I still do. Those questions don’t have answers, and maybe they never will, but they live in me just the same.

And then there is her birthday. Today. A day that should feel like celebration, like joy, like something shared. Instead, it feels like both love and heartbreak existing in the same breath. I remember the day she was born, the way my world changed in an instant, the way love rushed in so fiercely and so completely that I didn’t even know it was possible to feel that much for another human being. That moment never left me. That connection never disappeared, no matter how much time has passed or how far apart we have become.

Today, I sit with that love. Not the absence, not the questions, but the love itself. Because that is what remains. That is what has always remained. It is steady, it is unwavering, and it is still very much alive inside of me. Even after all these years, even after everything that has happened, I can say with complete certainty that I have never loved another the way I love her.

And somehow, that love has grown even bigger, because it now includes a granddaughter I have never met. That is a different kind of ache, one that is hard to explain. To love a child you have never held, never seen, never had the chance to know, simply because she is part of your daughter—it is both beautiful and heartbreaking all at once. I think about her, wonder about her, imagine what she is like, what her laugh sounds like, what kind of person she is becoming. I love her without knowing her, and that love is real, just as real as the love I carry for my daughter.

There are moments when the weight of all of this feels overwhelming. Moments when I wish things were different, when I wish I could go back and change something, fix something, understand something that I still don’t fully understand. There are moments when the silence feels too loud, when the absence feels too large to hold. It is a grief that doesn’t have a place to land, because there is no closure, no final chapter, just a story that continues without me in it.

But even in that, I have never stopped loving her.

Not once.

That is the part of this that people don’t always see. They may expect that time would lessen it, that years would soften the edges, that eventually I would let go in some way. But that’s not how this kind of love works. A mother’s love does not come with conditions. It does not fade because of distance or silence or years apart. It stays. It remains. It holds on, even when there is nothing to hold onto.

So today, on her birthday, I choose to honor that love. Not by focusing on what has been lost, but by remembering what has always been there. The love I felt the day she was born is still the love I carry today. It has not changed. It has not disappeared. It has only become something deeper, something stronger, something that has endured through everything.

My heart is broken, that is true. There is no pretending otherwise. But it is also full of love, and that love has never left. It has never wavered. It will stay with me for the rest of my life, just as strong as it was in the beginning.

And if there is one thing I know for certain, it is this. No matter how many years pass, no matter how much distance remains between us, she will always be my daughter. I will always love her. And that love will remain with me until the day I take my last breath.