Freya Everly

The year of firsts constantly finds you with weights in your pockets while you straddle the coastline of being among the living and seeking out the spiritual. You’re a part of the world, but there’s a feeling of separateness from others that has you walking alone. 

Our family has now lived five long months without Freya. Each day carries a strange sense of Groundhog Day, as though time moves forward while we remain standing still. I have four unfinished posts sitting in my drafts because lately I’ve felt so adrift. The anchor that helped me weather the crashing waves of grief feels as though it has slipped from my grasp, and I’m washing out to sea.

Since Mother’s Day I’ve had a mask in place that allows me to walk in the world and appear to function, but I’m an utter wreck.

I miss Freya with a depth that still has me catching my breath at times. May and June are bringing a constant barrage of wonderful things that are also heartbreaking. Mother’s Day hardly felt like a day to celebrate–a piece of me is missing. Graduations and milestones that mark growth and possibility feel hollow. Freya fought so hard for a future that wouldn’t be defined solely by cancer and sickness. She deserved more than her five years. I would make that trade for her without hesitation.

I want to feel genuine joy and excitement for others. Instead, it often feels as though I’m moving through a dense fog. I know how I should feel, but I can’t always access those feelings in my bones. I can’t always be fully present with them.

Lately, I’ve found myself living in a strange limbo. I look back on memories of Freya and try not to revisit every question about how things went so terribly wrong in December. There is a version of me that existed before December 22, 2025, and there is the person I am now—someone who has yet to be fully defined.

I am living between darkness and light, still sitting in the ashes.

For eleven weeks we’ve been stalled in our efforts to move forward with the first memorial project honoring Freya. Professionally, I remain disconnected from work that once gave me purpose and meaning. With so much feeling out of place, I’ve tried to focus my energy on how we want to honor Freya when we spread some of her ashes next month in Door County—a place that meant so much to our family.

So far, nothing feels right.

Perhaps that’s because after five months of immense sadness, there are still many days when I simply want to be profoundly sad. At the same time, I’m trying to remain present for the moments that Winnie and Miles deserve to experience and celebrate.

Summer is usually a season of freedom, growth, and memory-making. It’s a time when we see growth and life abound. There’s a vitality and vibrance to being out and living life–I’m utterly disconnected from that feeling. I used to burn so much brighter when Freya was here. Celebrations feel discordant with my subdued state of being. As summer arrives I feel like I’m about to be confronted with the unmaking of who I was before I lost her.  

Recently, I finished Joanne Cacciatore’s Bearing the Unbearable. In it, she writes that grief is not a place we simply pass through—it is an entirely different world. Profound loss shatters our reality and leaves us stranded in an in-between place. We cannot simply “get over it” and return unchanged to the land of the living, but neither are we among the dead. We need others to bear witness to our pain and remember alongside us because grief is too heavy to carry alone.

Another painful but profound insight she shares is that losing a child transforms a parent forever. After reading her book, I realized that I am a better person because I have grieved Freya, even though I wish with every fiber of my being that I never had to.

“Being the mother of a child who has died is a tragic privilege—one for which I never asked and certainly never wanted. Yet here I am—and here you are—unbearably wounded. It is the bereaved who are awakened from the slumber of self-satisfaction. It is the bereaved who can heal our world.”

That is a heavy truth to carry. Those of us who sit on this side of loss often gain hard-earned wisdom about what matters most, but that wisdom arrives at an unbearable cost. I am still trying to rebuild while grieving. Still trying to discover who I am now. It takes tremendous discipline to keep moving forward when you feel so lost.

The idea is difficult to write, but it continues to surface: this summer feels like my unmaking.

I don’t want Freya’s ashes to sit forever on our mantle. I want her to remain part of the living world. I want to discover a new purpose for whatever years remain in this life. I long for a light that can guide me from simply going through the motions to finding meaning again. The ache that has lived inside me since Freya died needs a place to go. It needs to become something larger than grief alone—something that includes everyone who loved her.

This post doesn’t have a neat ending. The truth is that this season has brought another wave of grief, and we’re still learning how to just keep swimming through it.

Thank you to everyone who continues to help keep us afloat.

Songs that have been with us: