Kate Didd

We’re in the car.

Not a car, the car. The one carrying two people who somehow loved each other, lost each other, and then politely decided to try again like emotionally responsible adults who absolutely did not read the manual.

My husband is driving. We’re talking about the future in that half-serious, half-terrified way where you pretend you’re casual but you’re really asking, So… are we doing this for real-real?

And then the universe, never subtle, turns on A Thousand Miles by Vanessa Carlton.

Of course it does.

I put on my sunglasses immediately. This is not for the sun. This is for emotional concealment. Because suddenly I’m seeing every lyric like it’s being typed across the windshield just for me. We’re singing. We’re off-key. We’re laughing the way you laugh when your body finally believes it’s safe.

And there it is, the unmistakable sensation that I’ve accidentally wandered into my own rom-com montage.

Everything feels… easy.

No anger. No resentment. No fear crouching in the backseat waiting to ruin the vibe. All those sharp, heavy things we carried around like emotional carry-ons just dissolve into thin air.

And then because I am who I am, every version of me shows up uninvited.

Little me, wide-eyed and cautious.

Teenage me, dramatic and desperate to be loved.

The broken mother who kept going on fumes.

The broken child who learned way too early how to be brave.

They’re all standing there, watching me live this moment, like a council meeting of past selves quietly whispering, Oh. So this is what we were holding on for.

I can feel all of them inside me at once, the woman who learned the lessons, the woman who loved people even when it hurt, the woman who still believes in humanity despite having plenty of reasons not to. The nostalgic one. The hopeful one. The one who kept dreaming even when life kept trying to talk her out of it.

They’re looking at me like, This is it. This is the moment you finally trusted yourself.

And for the first time, I don’t feel the need to carry the pain forward as proof of growth. I can just… set it down.

Halfway through the song, I point up at the sky like I’ve cracked some private cosmic joke, and the tears start sliding down my face. My husband reaches over and squeezes my leg, soft, familiar, instinctive. He’s done it a thousand times before when I was scared.

But this isn’t fear.

This is gratitude so deep it sneaks up on you and knocks the wind out of your chest.

It’s the realization that every hard thing I survived wasn’t random. That every choice I made, especially the imperfect ones, was steering me here. Toward this life. Toward being the mother I needed but never had. Toward creating something gentler for my children.

And today, today, I’m proud.

Not because I got it right.

But because I stayed.

I’ve spent years hurting myself for my mistakes, replaying them like deleted scenes I can’t stop rewatching. But my kids deserve a mother who doesn’t live in self-punishment. And honestly? So do I.

2025 has been the year of telling the truth, even when it’s messy and unflattering. I see now that most people aren’t cruel, they’re armored. And armor isn’t evil; it’s just evidence of survival. I see people fighting wars they never volunteered for. I see how hurt spills sideways and wounds the people closest to us.

I see how I did that too.

I regret the pain I caused. I own it. I learned from it. And standing next to this man, whose armor hurt me, whose wounds echo mine, I have the strangest, softest realization:

This is us as children.

Finally allowed to play in the light.

We are more than the damage. More than the coping mechanisms. More than the mistakes we made while trying not to break. And I am so deeply grateful that I know what real love feels like, not the fairy-tale kind, but the earned, honest, shows-up-anyway kind.

Maybe this is a Christmas miracle.

Or maybe it’s just what happens when you keep choosing healing long after the applause dies down.

Either way, I believe this now, not as hope, but as fact:

No matter what today brings, tomorrow can be better.

I don’t just believe it.

I’ve already watched it happen.