I grapple with an overwhelming need—an unyielding desire to know where each beloved family member is every second of the day. We’ve formed a family circle on a phone tracking app, connected not just by love but now by the presence of technology. Our respective states, mere marks across a map, do little to bridge the chasm in my heart. Yet, I feel a semblance of solace knowing where they are in this vast world, even though nothing will ever cure this ache.

I speak to my children like clockwork, and our daily conversations are a lifeline holding me above the depths of despair. But if a day starts to slip by without the sound of their voices, a suffocating panic wraps around my throat, a physical manifestation of my deep-seated fears. The loss, the void, becomes tangible, etched across my heart, tearing at the seams of my reality.

I wonder if normalcy will ever grace my life again. Normal, a word once so mundane, now feels alien and unattainable. Since the day my world shattered, I feel like I’ve been treading water, searching for a shore that no longer exists.

I find myself whispering to the winds, “I just want my girl back.”

Why is life so unbearably unfair? To hold her, to see her smile, to hear her laughter once more is a longing that knows no end. My words fade into the ether, yet they are my truth, raw and unvarnished.

So here I am, heart exposed and aching, trying to exist in a world that feels eternally altered. I clutch to the hope that somehow, from somewhere, a sliver of peace might find its way to me to cradle me in these nights of longing. Until then, I remain a soul searching for quietude, a mother reaching across the cosmos for the lost child she forever loves.