Kate Didd

I woke in a fevered shiver, the kind of cold sweat that slicks the skin with the memory of something you swear is still in the room. The other side of the bed was empty, of course. It always is but in the witching hush before dawn, the emptiness had a pulse, a breath. Like he was there again, not the man himself, but the ghost of the way he once stole the air from my lungs, the echo of hands that lingered long after they let go.

I stared at the ceiling, chest tight, wondering how a soul can feel both heavy and hollow at the same time.And then the old thought returned:

No one can know I’m lost.

Not today.

Not ever before sunrise.

4:30 a.m.

My hour.

My borrowed sliver of solitude where the world is muted but my mind is deafening. It’s funny, this is the only time I’m supposed to be alone, yet in my head, I’m alone all day long. I wonder if anyone would notice if I cracked right down the middle like a plate dropped in slow motion. Probably not today. Probably not on a Wednesday that already feels like a lifetime.

I glance at the calendar.

Appointments.

Errands.

Kid things.

Life things.

Nothing that whispers “take care of yourself” in any language I understand.

Workout?

No.

Not today.

Today I’m a mother before I am a woman, a ghost, a dream, or a body with needs. I pull on the soft blue sweatshirt, the mom-uniform that signals “safe,” “warm,” “I’m trying.”

Blue calms them.

Blue attempts to calm me.

But today’s a high-energy morning, vibrating with the tension of tiny bodies anticipating pain.

Shots.

Routine.

Necessary.

And somehow I still feel like the villain in a story I’m trying so hard to rewrite. Walking into that room with them was like walking backward into my own childhood, the screams, the fear, the helplessness. But this time I didn’t freeze. I didn’t disappear into the dark.

I stayed.

Present.

Breathing with them.

In through your nose…

out through your mouth.

A spell.

A ritual.

A mother’s magic meant to tether us all to the earth when everything inside threatened to float away. Their screams tore through me, folded me inside-out. But I crawled right back out of the old wounds and wrapped myself around my children like I was building a nest out of my own bones.

That’s motherhood, not the curated dream they sell you, but the raw, feral truth of holding their pain inside your own body until it quiets. Afterwards, I offered them a sweet treat, knowing full well sugar doesn’t heal trauma but sometimes softness does.

Sometimes gentleness is the balm, even when the memory still throbs beneath it. As I drove home, I felt that familiar ache, the generational echo of mothers who were not present, who could not stay steady in the storm. I am trying so hard not to be them.

Trying to show up for the version of me who needed someone to soften the world. Motherhood isn’t just diapers and schedules it’s a conversation with the universe. It’s begging for signs in tarot and stargazing the way some people pray.

It’s living with the haunting fear that losing your child would end the entire world, because it would. And yet people judge. People who’ve never held a feverish child at 3 a.m. while a doctor says, “If we can’t get her temperature down…” People who don’t know what it is to barter with God, or the Moon, or whatever deity handles mothers’ shaking hands. But this, this isn’t about them.

This is about what my children will remember when they stand over my wrinkled hands at 97, or 100, or whatever miracle I drag myself into. I want to be the grandmother whose long life is proof that survival becomes legacy. Four generations, maybe five, orbiting around the simple truth that I stayed. I fought. I breathed through it. I didn’t think I’d live this long.

I truly didn’t. But here I am, watching the New Moon in Scorpio carve shadow and silver across my world like an invitation. A beginning from the deepest ending. A rebirth dripping in mystery and grit. This is my awakening, not explosive, not glamorous, but quiet, trembling, determined.

I am reaching for the woman I never believed I could become. The one who holds her children and herself with equal devotion. The one who chooses life even on the mornings when it feels impossible. The one who walks into the dark and doesn’t flinch. Every day I rewrite the story. Every day I rewire the fear. Every day I step deeper into the version of me who survived because she had something worth surviving for.

Under this Scorpio Moon,

I rise.

Awake.

Unwavering.

Still scared,

but no longer running.

This is how I become her.