This reflection is part of my personal healing archive—a remembering of what came before the unraveling.
Before the ache of being left,
before the unraveling,
there was wholeness.
I was five years old and my world was perfect—
because my mother was my world.
My everything.
I had her all to myself.
We shared a bed, as there was no crib,
because she didn’t believe in separating us.
She was ahead of her time, people say.
I was born at home,
a Monday morning baby
welcomed by a midwife and warm sunshine.
My mom told me that story many times—
the sky blue,
the air gentle,
the moment just right for bringing me into the world.
Our small home was cocooned in love.
Not just the kind that wraps you up in hugs,
but the kind that settles into your bones—
quiet and steady.
My aunt and uncle—my mom’s sister and her husband—
lived in the same housing complex.
So not only was I safe with my mom,
I was surrounded by extended love.
There was laughter, shared meals,
and grown-up voices that felt like shelter.
And then there was the dog.
A neighborhood golden-colored mutt who became my dog.
He wasn’t ours officially,
but he might as well have been.
My mom said he slept outside our bedroom door.
No one could enter when I was asleep—not with him there.
He was my guardian, my companion.
My best friend.
He didn’t come with us the day I left.
The day everything shifted.
Leaving Day.
That morning didn’t feel different at first.
The air was the same,
the light creeping in just as it always did.
But something was missing.
My dog.
My protector.
My mom said someone left the gate open,
and he must’ve run away—
been hit by a car.
I stood at that gate, staring out, numb.
My five-year-old heart couldn’t comprehend grief yet,
but something shattered quietly inside me.
I didn’t know it then,
but I would carry that silent break with me for decades.
I don’t remember her packing my things.
Did she do it the night before while I slept?
Did she cry?
Was she scared too?
My memory blurs here,
fades into silence.
My brain, even then, was trying to protect me.
I didn’t know the absence of that golden dog was a foreshadowing.
I didn’t know my mom was about to leave me
in the care of someone else
so she could work—
build a better life for us.
All I knew was the stillness of goodbye,
the confusion of not understanding
why I couldn’t go with her,
and the sinking feeling that love had a time limit.
This is the beginning of the thread
I would later trace back through therapy,
through tears,
through writing.
This is the moment before fear became my default.
Before the subconscious wiring of uncertainty,
self-doubt,
anxiety,
and separation was laid.
This was before I was changed by what happened next.
This was before.
And she,
that little girl,
couldn’t be left behind.
With an open heart,
Meagan