She did not transform into someone unrecognizable; she stripped away the lies and stood as herself. After the suicide attempt, she abandoned the performance of being “fine.” Therapy tore open old scars. Recovery rooms and church basements made her feel exposed, but they also gave her words for pain she had only ever numbed or outrun. Motherhood, once a crushing weight she feared she’d drop, slowly became a tether to life—a daily, stubborn decision to stay, to try, to choose effort over erasure.
With Jeremy, she learned to trade accusations for uneasy truth, then for real partnership. Their son would not inherit the chaos they survived. The world would chant his name, buy his albums, memorize his lyrics, never realizing how much of his steadiness was borrowed from her quiet courage. When she speaks now, it is to honor her own survival and to murmur into other shadows: you are not over.
