This blog is a space where I share my spirituality, the loss of my son, and the raw grief I live with as I find my path again.
Page 1, 2,With each cycle of the Moon, it eventually reaches its most beautiful and illuminated phase - the Full Moon.
Each Full Moon is special in its own way. Throughout history, the Moon has been watched and followed not only by spiritual people, but by farmers, sailors, hunters, and communities who relied on the natural world. Before modern calendars and technology, the Moon helped people keep track of time, seasons, planting, harvesting, and the changing rhythms of nature.
Different cultures gave the Full Moons names based on what was happening around them during that particular time of year. These names were often connected to animals, weather, plants, farming, hunting, and the changing seasons.
Over time, the Full Moon also became deeply connected to spirituality and ritual. Its bright light has been seen as a symbol of illumination - a time to reflect, celebrate what has grown, and release what we no longer need.
Let's take a look at each Full Moon throughout the year and the meaning behind its name.
January - Wolf Moon
Named for the wolves traditionally associated with the cold January nights. Meaning: Strength, instinct, protection, reflection, and new beginnings.
February - Snow Moon
Named for February's traditionally heavy snowfall. Meaning: Patience, endurance, resilience, and inner strength.
March - Worm Moon
Named for the earthworms that appear as the ground thaws and spring approaches. Meaning: Rebirth, renewal, awakening, and coming out of darkness.
April - Pink Moon
Named after the pink spring flowers that begin to bloom. Meaning: Love, growth, renewal, self-worth, and new possibilities.
May - Flower Moon
Named for the abundance of flowers blooming in May. Meaning: Blooming, creativity, abundance, love, and transformation.
June - Strawberry Moon
Named for the seasonal strawberry harvest. Meaning: Love, sweetness, gratitude, connection, and joy.
July - Buck Moon
Named for the time when male deer begin growing their new antlers. Meaning: Strength, growth, confidence, courage, and personal power.
August - Sturgeon Moon
Named for the sturgeon fish traditionally plentiful at this time of year. Meaning: Abundance, intuition, perseverance, strength, and recognizing your growth.
September - Harvest Moon
The Full Moon closest to the autumn equinox, traditionally important during harvest season. Meaning: Gratitude, abundance, completion, reflection, and letting go.
October - Hunter's Moon
Traditionally associated with preparing for winter through hunting and gathering food. Meaning: Preparation, protection, instinct, and trusting your intuition.
November - Beaver Moon
Named for the time when beavers prepared for winter and built their homes. Meaning: Preparation, security, rebuilding, stability, and protecting your energy.
December - Cold Moon
Named for the cold, long nights of December. Meaning: Stillness, reflection, closure, rest, and preparing for a new beginning.
Perhaps that's the real beauty of the Full Moon. Every month, it returns to remind us to pause, look up, and reflect on where we are in our own journey.
For me, the Moon holds an even deeper meaning because of Tuck. We loved the night sky. We would chase the Moon and the stars, looking up together and taking in the beauty above us. We even made Moon Water together, leaving it beneath the Moon and enjoying the ritual and meaning behind it.
Now, when I look at the Full Moon, I think of him. I wonder if he can see it too - the same Moon, the same stars, the same sky that we once shared.
Maybe that's why I find comfort in its cycles. The Moon changes, disappears, and returns again - but it is never truly gone.
And perhaps that's the reminder I need most: love doesn't disappear either. It changes, but it remains.
So every time I look up at the Moon, I'll keep chasing it - just like we used to.
Maybe, somewhere beneath that same Moon, I'll always find a little piece of Tuck.
I heard a saying once: "I woke up the day after my child died, and that must be the cruelest thing grief did to me."
I disagree.
It's not just the day after. It's the days that turn into weeks, that turn into months, that turn into… years. The fucking cruelty that comes with waking up each day. Opening my eyes and realizing, yet again, that this is my life. Feeling like a failure of a parent yet again. Because what the hell am I still doing here? How am I still alive when my only child is nothing but ashes?
It's like the movie Groundhog Day. The same day, over and over and over again. I wake up, I remember, I hurt, I miss him, I try to get through the day, and then I do it all again. Yet somehow, while I feel like I am standing in the exact same place, time keeps moving. Days pass. Weeks pass. Months pass. Years pass. The world keeps going while I feel fucking stuck in the same moment.
And maybe the strangest part is that it feels like I just keep repeating the same words. I miss my son. I am not okay. This hurts. I don't know how to do this. I don't understand how I am supposed to live without him. I say the same things because they are still true. Yet I feel so misunderstood.
People hear the words, but they don't always hear what is underneath them. They hear that I miss my son, but they don't understand that I miss him every second. They hear that I am struggling, but they don't understand that this isn't something I can simply work through and leave behind. They see me getting up, talking, laughing, doing things, and somehow that becomes proof that I must be getting better.
But I am not. I am just getting better at carrying something that should have never been mine to carry.
That is a question I ask myself every second of every day: What the hell am I still doing here? And I don't doubt that question follows me into my sleep.
It makes no sense. There is no reasoning behind it. No explanation that makes this okay. No words that can make me understand why my child is gone.
"No one knows God's plan." "It's God's way." "He is with God's love."
Well, sorry, but I don't want to hear it. I want to be the one to love my son. My child.
The child I carried. The only one who ever heard my heartbeat from the inside. The only one who grew beneath my heart, knowing the rhythm of me before he ever knew the world. The one who called me Mom.
The child I raised. The child I loved with every part of me. The child I was supposed to watch grow old. The child who was supposed to bury me, not the other way around.
I want him here. I want to hear his voice. I want to see his face. I want to watch him grow. I want the ordinary, everyday things that I never imagined I would have to live without.
I don't want an explanation. I don't want a reason. I don't want someone to tell me he is in a better place. I want him.
And maybe that is what people don't understand about grief.
The cruelest part wasn't waking up the day after my son died. It was waking up the day after that. And the day after that. And the day after that. Until the days became weeks. The weeks became months. The months became years.
And somehow, I'm still here. Still waking up. Still breathing. Still missing him. Still asking the same impossible question: How the hell am I still alive when my only child isn't?
I didn't lose one child. I lost two. My stepson and my biological son. Two completely different losses. Different grief. Different pain. But both hurt beyond belief.
My stepson came first.
I fell in love with him instantly. He taught me unconditional love in a way I could never have understood before him. He taught me that you don't have to give birth to a child to love them as your own. He taught me the incredible bond between a step-parent and stepchild. He became my child in every way that mattered to my heart.
And then came my son.
My baby boy. My mini me. The one I grew inside me. The one who heard my heartbeat from the inside. The one I felt growing inside me. A love that existed before he did. My son made me a real mom. He was my baby. My only biological child. My boy. The only one who called me Mom. The one who was supposed to grow up, grow older, and have a whole lifetime ahead of him.
I love them both so fiercely. And now I grieve both of these losses in completely different ways. I grieve my son because I lost him to death. And I grieve my stepson because I lost the relationship we once had, even though he is still alive.
Sometimes you can lose someone without them dying. Sometimes a relationship is shattered by circumstances and choices that were completely beyond your control. Sometimes the person you loved as your own becomes someone you can no longer have in your life. And sometimes the hardest part is knowing that choices made by someone you loved had consequences that reached far beyond them. Consecutives that touched the person you loved most in this world. Consecutives that took that person away forever.
There are things I will never be able to understand. Things I will never be able to change. Things that changed our family forever. But underneath both of these losses is another loss I don't think people always understand.
I grieve the life we had. The four of us. The love. The laughter. The chaos. The ordinary days that I never knew would become memories I would give anything to have back. We were a family. We had a happy home.
And then somehow, that home became a deafening silence and darkness. A happy home shattered. A family shattered. A life shattered. A life that sometimes feels like it never even existed. A life that is no more, never to be again. Nothing left but memories.
But it did. It existed. We were happy. We loved each other. We laughed. We had a life together. And now I find myself grieving all of it. I grieve my son. I grieve my stepson. And I grieve the four of us. The family we were, the home we had, and the life that once felt so ordinary and permanent.
Different losses. Different grief. Different pain. But all of it has changed me. I am forever changed by these losses. Some days I feel like I am lost in an abyss, trying to find my way back to a version of myself that doesn't exist anymore.
She doesn't exist anymore. That woman belonged to that life. Before the silence. Before the darkness. Before everything shattered. I don't know where I belong now.
I just know that I am still here, carrying two very different losses, carrying the memories of a family that once was, and trying to find my way through an abyss I never asked to enter. I lost my son completely. I lost my stepson in a different way. And I lost the life we had together. Three losses. Three different kinds of grief.
And somehow, I have to learn how to live with all of them.