Living with grief, resilience, and the quiet art of survival
I was walking into work today when I crossed paths with a beetle in the parking lot. We both paused—me, trying not to crush it; it, maybe trying to figure out if I was a threat. I stepped around it. It kept going. But that small exchange stuck with me. It made me wonder: did the bug perceive me? And if it did, did it register more than just survival instinct? Could it understand something beyond the programming wired into its body?
That question unraveled into something bigger: what if there are entire forms of perception, intelligence, or awareness that exist outside the framework we use to define them? We’re so human about our understanding of the world—always mapping it back to ourselves, as if we’re the baseline for comprehension. But maybe that beetle wasn’t just reacting. Maybe, in its own way, it noticed me. And maybe I noticed it because something in that moment mirrored the way I feel most days: surviving, navigating, pausing, wondering if anyone really sees me.
And the timing? Yesterday was Mother’s Day.
That day carries weight. It always has. My birth mother died five days before my first birthday. My grandmother—who became my caregiver, my abuser, my complicated everything—died in 2003. I’ve spent years sorting through a layered mess of grief, anger, love, resentment, and relief. Add to that the aching absence of the family I never got to have. I’ve been pregnant three times. Once in 1991, when my grandmother forced me to terminate. In 1999, I lost a son—Paul Joseph Jacobs Jr., PJ for short—at 19 weeks. In 2015, an ectopic pregnancy. And every year since, Mother’s Day grief has been an emotional fault line.
So yes, I was at a party that day. With my UD Dining crew—young Indian students I’ve worked with in catering, grown to love, rooted for. Most of their families are oceans away. Only a couple had parents who could make it to graduation. One had her sister and brother-in-law. The rest? They had us—supervisors, coworkers, people like me who took them under our wing, who cheered for them, helped them adjust to life here, and gave them space to just be. And yet, despite my pride and joy for them, I kept feeling like I was on the outside.
It wasn’t constant, but it came in waves: that creeping voice that says, they don’t get you. That old, familiar hollowness. The kind that makes your smile falter. I’ve learned not to trust those thoughts completely. They don’t usually mean something’s wrong with the people around me—they mean something’s stirred inside me. A part of my trauma holding tight, trying to protect me from rejection, from being truly vulnerable.
There’s a heavy, dark, emotional place inside me that I’ve never fully unpacked. It holds memories and feelings that are too painful to process all at once. I’ve learned to manage the symptoms. I’ve become fluent in the language of emotional survival. It’s how I live with grief and chronic trauma while still showing up in the world.
And this is what I’ve come to believe: for me, healing doesn’t mean excavating every memory. It doesn’t mean reopening every wound. Healing, in my case, looks like care. Like stewardship. Like treating my trauma not as something to conquer, but something I have to live alongside. It’s a chronic condition. And like any condition, it demands maintenance, compassion, vigilance, and rest.
I didn’t get the family I imagined—the house full of kids, the partner, the loud dinners, the messy joy. But I have been a safe space. For the students I’ve worked with. For friends. For myself. I’ve shown up in ways that matter, even when I’ve been hurting. I’ve created something out of what was broken. Maybe I didn’t get to be a traditional mother. But I mother in a hundred small ways every day. That’s survival, too. That’s what unseen motherhood can look like.
Maybe that beetle did see me. Maybe it didn’t. But I saw it. And in that moment, I saw myself.
Still moving. Still aware. Still surviving.
(This personal essay explores emotional survival, Mother’s Day grief, and unseen motherhood. If this resonated with you, I invite you to explore more reflections in the Personal Experiences and Reflections section of the blog.)
That question unraveled into something bigger: what if there are entire forms of perception, intelligence, or awareness that exist outside the framework we use to define them? We’re so human about our understanding of the world—always mapping it back to ourselves, as if we’re the baseline for comprehension. But maybe that beetle wasn’t just reacting. Maybe, in its own way, it noticed me. And maybe I noticed it because something in that moment mirrored the way I feel most days: surviving, navigating, pausing, wondering if anyone *really* sees me.
And the timing? Yesterday was Mother’s Day.
That day carries weight. It always has. My birth mother died five days before my first birthday. My grandmother—who became my caregiver, my abuser, my complicated everything—died in 2003. I’ve spent years sorting through a layered mess of grief, anger, love, resentment, and relief. Add to that the aching absence of the family I never got to have. I’ve been pregnant three times. Once in 1991, when my grandmother forced me to terminate. In 1999, I lost a son—Paul Joseph Jacobs Jr., PJ for short—at 19 weeks. In 2015, an ectopic pregnancy. And every year since, Mother’s Day has been an emotional fault line.
So yes, I was at a party that day. With my UD Dining crew—young Indian students I’ve worked with in catering, grown to love, rooted for. Most of their families are oceans away. Only a couple had parents who could make it to graduation. One had her sister and brother-in-law. The rest? They had us—supervisors, coworkers, people like me who took them under our wing, who cheered for them, helped them adjust to life here, and gave them space to just *be*. And yet, despite my pride and joy for them, I kept feeling like I was on the outside.
It wasn’t constant, but it came in waves: that creeping voice that says, *they don’t get you.* That old, familiar hollowness. The kind that makes your smile falter. I’ve learned not to trust those thoughts completely. They don’t usually mean something’s wrong with the people around me—they mean something’s stirred inside *me.* A part of my trauma holding tight, trying to protect me from rejection, from being truly vulnerable.
There’s a heavy, dark, emotional place inside me that I’ve never fully unpacked. It holds memories and feelings that are too painful to process all at once. I’ve learned to manage the symptoms. I’ve become fluent in the language of emotional survival. I watch for the signs. I track the spirals. I respond before I fall. That’s how I function. It’s not perfect. It’s not painless. But it lets me live. It lets me work, love, create, show up.
And this is what I’ve come to believe: for me, healing doesn’t mean excavating every memory. It doesn’t mean reopening every wound. Healing, in my case, looks like care. Like stewardship. Like treating my trauma not as something to conquer, but something I have to live alongside. It’s a chronic condition. And like any condition, it demands maintenance, compassion, vigilance, and rest.
I didn’t get the family I imagined—the house full of kids, the partner, the loud dinners, the messy joy. But I *have* been a safe space. For the students I’ve worked with. For friends. For myself. I’ve shown up in ways that matter, even when I’ve been hurting. I’ve created something out of what was broken. Maybe I didn’t get to be a traditional mother. But I mother in a hundred small ways every day. That’s survival, too.
Maybe that beetle did see me. Maybe it didn’t. But I saw it. And in that moment, I saw myself.
Still moving. Still aware. Still surviving.
(This personal essay explores emotional survival, Mother’s Day grief, and unseen motherhood. If this resonated with you, I invite you to explore more reflections in the Personal Experiences and Reflections section of the blog.)