I woke up that morning like so many others, but something inside me had broken the night before. I had received an unexpected medical diagnosis for my young son. The doctor's words echoed endlessly in my head: "He will require long-term therapy; we don't yet know the exact prognosis." I felt like the ground was giving way beneath my feet. For days, I moved like an automaton, caring for him, smiling at him, but inside I was in freefall.
The hardest part wasn't the fear, but the guilt. I wondered if I had done something wrong, if I could have prevented it. Every cry of his pierced me like a knife. I shut myself away in a thick silence, distancing myself even from those who offered me a helping hand. One afternoon, as I rocked him to sleep, I saw his calm, trusting face, still unaware of any label or prognosis. And I understood that he hadn't given up. He was still there, fighting every day to grow, to smile, to crawl toward me.
That image hit me with the force of a sudden awakening. I realized that getting back up didn't mean denying the pain or pretending to be strong. It meant accepting that I was broken, but that I could rebuild myself from a different place. I picked up the phone, called my sister, and cried unfiltered. The next day, I sought a second opinion. I joined a support group for parents. I started writing down what I felt, letting go of the guilt like someone releasing a rock that was too heavy.
Today, my son is still in therapy; there are good days and bad days. But I learned that getting up is a small, everyday act: choosing the bed over the abyss, making breakfast with a glimmer of hope, laughing with him even though the future is uncertain. The fall was real, and the scars remain. But there's also the certainty that you can hit rock bottom and, from there, discover that you still know how to swim.
Getting up isn't about going back to being the same person you were before; it's about building a deeper, more human version of yourself, capable of inhabiting fragility and transforming it into tenderness. And that, even though it hurts, is also a way of soaring.
