I broke when my son died.
Not in a way that could be repaired, but in a way that fractured something fundamental. After Dustin, I lived with that fracture. I learned how to move carefully. I became vigilant. I understood how fragile everything is, how quickly life can turn, how little control we actually have.
I rebuilt after that. Not because the fracture healed, but because life demanded it. I rebuilt function, routine, meaning. I learned how to live around the broken place.
When my daughter died, it didn’t feel like a new breaking.
I was already broken.
The grief was familiar. The shock, the disbelief, the weight in the chest, the looping thoughts, the search for meaning. I recognized the terrain immediately. I knew what grief does to time, to the body, to thought.
Kayla’s death didn’t create a new fracture. It struck the same one.
That doesn’t make the loss smaller. It makes it more devastating in a different way. It is one thing to be fractured once. It is another to realize that the same break can be hit again.
What changed wasn’t my awareness. I had already learned vigilance. I had already learned how deeply love can wound. What changed was my understanding of rebuilding.
Rebuilding doesn’t reinforce the fracture. It doesn’t protect it. It simply allows you to keep living with it.
So now I am rebuilding again.
Not from wholeness. Not from hope that vigilance prevents loss. But from experience. From knowing exactly how deep the fracture runs and choosing, once more, to live around it.
This is not a story about breaking twice.
It is a story about living with a break, and discovering that even a life rebuilt can still be struck at its weakest place.
