#familyseparation
People say every parent hurts when they lose time with their children.
And they’re right.
But what people don’t understand is that my story started long before I became a mum.
I was eight years old when I first learned what it meant to take care of someone else.
While other children were playing outside and learning what childhood felt like—
I was helping my mum, looking after my siblings, learning responsibility before I even understood what childhood was supposed to be.
I didn’t grow up dreaming about the future.
I grew upholding things together.
Then at seventeen I became a mum.
And suddenly all that caring, all that protecting, all that loving—
had somewhere to go.
Four years later-another little life needed me.
Five years after that my third.
By then being “mum”wasn’t just something I did.
It was who I was.
Because I had never known a life that wasn’t built around caring for someone else.
Six years later my fourth child arrived.
And that’s whenever thing went wrong.
Not with loving them.
Never with loving them.
But with being forced to live a life without them.
People say other parents go through this too.
And they do.
But many of them had years before their children.
Years to build themselves. Years to learn who they were.
I didn’t.
I went froma child caring for others to a mother raising children.
So when my world changed—when my children were no longer in my arms or running through my home—
it didn’t just feel like losing them.
It felt like losing the only life I had ever known.
Because when your whole life has been built around loving and protecting and raising others—
you don’t just lose time with your children.
You lose the part of you-that only ever existed when they were there.
Mar 16
Mar 16, 2026 at 2:11 PM UTC