Last night damn near broke me.

I found myself sitting on the floor with my 16-year-old son, holding him in my arms like I used to when he was small. Only this time, it wasn’t scraped knees or bad dreams that brought him to me—it was something heavier, deeper, unspoken. And for the first time in nearly five years, he let me that close. He let me hold him.

I didn’t have answers. I didn’t have a fix. I just had my arms, my breath, my presence. And in that moment, it didn’t feel like enough. Not even close.

Watching your child break—really break—knowing you can’t mend it, can’t take it away, can’t fix it with a Band-Aid or a wise word… it’s one of the most gut-wrenching things I’ve ever experienced. There’s a kind of pain that only mothers know. This was it.

We are preparing to move back to Illinois, and everything in our world feels tender and unsettled. It’s emotional for all of us, but as mom, I feel like I have to keep it all together. I have to keep moving. I have to make the lists, pack the boxes, sign the forms, hold everyone else afloat—even as I feel like I’m drowning inside.

What undoes me the most is this quiet ache: that I couldn’t keep a promise. That I couldn’t be the kind of mother who gave her child a hometown he could grow up in, a single front porch to bring his friends home to. One place. One anchor. The thing he needed.

Instead, I am giving him transition. Goodbyes. One more move. One more disruption.

And even though I know I’ve done my best, it doesn’t make the grief go away. It just lives here now, beside the love.

I am undone.
But I am here.

And maybe that’s what matters most.

I showed up on the floor. I didn’t look away from his pain. I didn’t run from my own.

This isn’t a redemption story, not yet. This is a real one.

Where sometimes the greatest act of motherhood is to sit in the ruins with your child, heart wide open, arms around their breaking.

Where love doesn’t fix it.
It just stays.

With Love, and a Breaking Heart,

-J

A Prayer for My Son and His Breaking Heart

God,
Be near to my son in the places I cannot reach.
Hold the pieces of his heart that feel too sharp for me to touch.
Let him feel You in the quiet,
in the ache,
in the questions that have no answers.

Give him strength to feel what he needs to feel,
and the safety to not hide from it.
Let him know he is not alone,
not too much,
not forgotten.

Where my arms fall short,
let Your love surround him.
Where I couldn’t give him roots in one place,
grow something deeper in him—
a rootedness that doesn’t depend on walls or addresses.

And for me, Lord—
give me courage to sit in this with him,
even when I’m afraid, even when I’m tired.
Remind me that presence is enough,
that love doesn’t have to look like control,
and that I can be undone… and still be his anchor.

Amen