Reading this thread and your posts puts front and center for me what is it stake here, on CD, for each of us, our lives.
The vulnerability of our children seems to provoke us to put our own lives in risk, and to feel that our lives and by inference ourselves, have value only to the extent that we are able to save our children.
When we arrive here at CD there is almost an unspoken belief: my life not worth much at all, unless I can save him.
Or we come here at the moment when we risk challenging that belief. But we are unsure and require each other to do so. To believe that we can have value, even when they, our children, seem to assert by their conduct and choices, that we do not. At least it feels like that at the beginning. Or at least it did for me.
And we walk with each other those first few steps, so that we are not so afraid.
I think that is why it becomes so scary when one of us disappears. We fear for them, and as much, for ourselves. Because we only were able to risk it, with them there, to hold our hands.
I am so sad. I never knew her. But I know myself and my child and the way I love him. And the risks I have taken to live my own life, and to insist that he live his own.
KLMO did not hold my hand directly, but indeed she did so indirectly. Because we are a chain of mothers here. She came before. I after. She held my hand. I grieve her and I did not know her. My condolences to those of you who did.
COPA