When I was around thirteen (8th grade), my father met another woman. For the first time since my mom died, something in the house shifted, there was a sense of safety. Happiness. About nine months into their relationship, she moved in. She did not try to replace anyone. Instead, she stepped into a space I had been desperately grieving.

She was kind. She listened. She noticed me.

She felt safe. She became both a mother figure and a friend in many ways. I didn’t even realize how badly I needed this until it was suddenly there. After years of emotional absence, I finally had someone who offered warmth and presence.

And for a while, it mattered more than I can explain. I wasn’t always alone anymore. I wasn’t carrying everything by myself. The ache softened — just a little.

But stability in my life had a pattern of being temporary. About a year later, my father convinced her to quit working and start traveling with him while he worked away. He didn’t know it, but she hated leaving me. She did her best to be home as much as she. But once again, the ground shifted. In their minds, I wasn’t being left unattended — my oldest brother had moved back home around that time.

This is my father’s son — not my brother on my mom’s side — and that distinction matters.

He was going through a divorce. He was hurting. He was unraveling in his own way. And while he worked offshore too, when he was home, something real existed between us.

On the nights he stayed home, we grew close.

We watched series together. We talked. We shared space. When he came home late and I was still awake, he had DVR. I was always in his room. He’d eat, drunk and exhausted. I’d pick up his plate afterward.

It wasn’t a role I should’ve been in, but it was the one I knew. In our own way, we took care of each other. And those moments mattered, more than anyone will know. Not many people were there when I needed someone, but he was. Just two broken siblings, healing together.

He wasn’t my parent — and he was never meant to be — but he wasn’t absent in spirit. He was surviving something too. And when he was around, I didn’t feel completely invisible.

Still, the truth remains layered.Because of work schedules, relationships, and life pulling everyone in different directions, I was still often alone. Even when adults were technically “home,” supervision wasn’t consistent.

Sometimes my brother was gone. Sometimes he was out. Sometimes he was just exhausted from carrying his own weight.

So while it looked like I wasn’t alone anymore, I still had freedom without structure.

I still did whatever I wanted. I still got away with things. I still didn’t have steady guidance a teenager needs.

This isn’t about blaming anyone. It’s about naming reality.

I wasn’t alone in the room. But I was still alone in the responsibility. And that space — between presence and protection — is where so much of my story continued to unfold.

Closing Prayer

God,

Thank You for the people who showed up imperfectly but sincerely. For shared moments of care in the middle of chaos. For connection that existed even when structure didn’t.

Hold the truth with gentleness — that love can be real even when protection is incomplete. Heal what no one was equipped to carry. And honor the ways we survived together, and seperately, even when neither of us should have had to.

Amen.

XOXO, The Healing Wildflower