They say time heals all wounds, but I think they forgot to mention that time also has a way of sharpening the clarity of your scars.
If you’ve followed me for a while, you know my life used to be defined by a very specific kind of beautiful, loud, exhausting noise. Five boys. Five sets of muddy boots by the door. A whirlwind of energy ranging from my oldest, MJ (now 12), down to my tiny firecracker Jack (3). In the middle of that pack were Matthew (9), Jasper (9), and Mateo (7).
Then, a year ago, the dream just… ended.
I am a 43-year-old entrepreneur, a woman built on grit and hard work, but nothing in my career prepared me for the grief of losing access to my own children. In the wreckage of this past year, I’ve had to do some deep internal “auditing.” I’ve had to look at the difference between Love and Hope. Because, as it turns out, one of them was saving me, and the other was holding me hostage.
The Illusion of “If I Were Him”
For a long time, I lived on Hope. But it wasn’t the beautiful, “light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel” kind of hope. It was a deceptive, dangerous version.
When I looked at the man I shared a life with, I practiced a specific kind of mental gymnastics: I put myself in his shoes. I would think, “If I saw my partner hurting, I would reach out. If I saw our family splintering, I would sacrifice my ego to fix it. If I were him, I would prioritize intimacy, deep conversation, and the emotional safety of our boys above all else.”
But there is a fatal flaw in that logic. I am not him. And no matter how much I pleaded, he was not capable of being me in the most import and tender moments of our lives.
When I “hoped” he would change, I wasn’t actually hoping for him. I was hoping he would suddenly develop my heart, my values, and my capacity for emotional depth. I was projecting my own blueprint for love onto a man who was using a completely different set of architectural plans.
Love vs. Control: The Comfort Factor
As an entrepreneur, I thrive on connection. For me, love is found in the “deep end.” It’s late-night conversations that peel back the layers; it’s the vulnerability of being truly known; it’s the intimacy of shared thoughts. It isn’t about hobbies or just “doing things” together. I mean look at this blog… is it not overwhelming how much of myself I expose to anyone reading this? Complete strangers are welcome into the deep end with me. This is just how I love.
And I’ve had to face a hard truth: Not everyone loves the same. They just can’t and maybe they shouldn’t. Some people can only love in a way that centers their own comfort and their need for control. Some can only love the positive, the squeaky clean. Some can only connect enough to create the illusion of intimacy, but can’t let anyone actually in because if anyone actually knew the secrets they keep…
When love is filtered through a need for control, it doesn’t look like a bridge; it looks like a cage. It’s a love that says, “I will care for you as long as you fit into the version of life that makes me feel safe/powerful/unchallenged.” You cannot force someone to love you the way you need to be loved. You can scream into the void, you can provide the data, you can model the behavior—but if their “love” is actually “self-focused ego soothing,” your need for intimacy will always be seen as a threat to their comfort.
The Trap of Hoping for a Different Person
This is where the distinction gets painful.
When you keep hoping to be loved a certain way by someone who has shown you that they aren’t capable of it, you aren’t actually loving them either. You are loving a fictional version of them that you created in an effort to prove that you, yourself, are lovable too.
Think about that for a second. If my hope was dependent on Papi becoming a man who valued deep emotional work over his own ego and the shiny objects of his hobbies, then I wasn’t actually loving the man standing in front of me. I was loving a ghost. I was hoping he would become someone else. Someone he never was, and was never capable of being.
By holding onto that hope, I became attached to an outcome, not a person.
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The Outcome: The intact family, the five boys under one roof, the “happily ever after.”
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The Person: A man who, in reality, chose a path that resulted in the separation of siblings and the shattering of a mother’s heart. A man who couldn’t let love in. A man who refused to acknowledge birthdays, withheld children, disrespected his family, hurt his own children to prove a point. A man who is harmful to my most intimate thoughts and feelings, nevemind the feelings of my amazing little boys.
My grief, I realized, wasn’t necessarily for the man he is today. My grief was for the dream of the family we could have had if he had been more like me.
Mourning the “What Could Have Been”
For all my fellow “Chaos Planners” out there—the driven, hardworking moms who are trying to build empires while raising good men—this is the hardest pill to swallow: The dream is what kills you, not the reality.
Reality is cold, but it’s honest. The reality is that I am currently navigating a world without Jasper and Mateo’s daily presence. The reality is that the family is fractured and I will never allow it to be put back together the way it was. The reality is that actions were never actually corrected, and they were unforgiveable even with apologies that never came. The core of the reality is that the dream will never materialize: the “family” I so desperately wanted for all of my children, will never actually happen. Given their ages, the small, precious window to give them that has officially closed.
The “Dream,” however, is a shapeshifter. The dream tells me, “Maybe if you say it differently, he’ll understand.” The dream says, “Surely he sees the pain in the boys’ eyes.” The dream keeps you tethered to a version of the past that never actually existed in the way you imagined it.
I mourned the loss of the amazing family we created, but I had to acknowledge that we weren’t creating the same family. I was creating a sanctuary of connection; he was creating a novelty that he could float in and out of without anyone noticing, a level of avoidance he could manage. When those two visions collided, the avoidance won because it was willing to break everything to stay upright. My love was not.
Moving Forward with the Three
So, where does that leave me at 43, with three boys in the house and two in my heart?
It means choosing Love over Hope.
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I stop “hoping” he will change. This sounds cynical, but it’s actually liberating. When I stop expecting him to have my heart, I stop being disappointed when he doesn’t act like me. It allows me to see the situation clearly and protect my peace (and my boys) accordingly. I don’t hold him to an expectation he will never be capable of achieving and I finally accept him for who he truly is.
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I love my boys for who they are, not who I want them to be. I am doubling down on the intimacy I have worked to hard to create with MJ, Matthew, and Jack. We talk. We cry. We are “rough and tumble,” but we are also emotionally fluent. I am teaching them that love isn’t about control; it’s about the courage to be known. I am emphasizing that true love is allowing others to show you who they are and choosing to love them afar if that protects you.
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I embrace the grief of the dream. I allow myself to cry for the family that should have been. I acknowledge that the “outcome” I worked so hard for is gone. By mourning the dream, I can finally start living in the reality—and in the reality, I am actually completely OK and still have a such a valuable purpose.
To the Woman in the Middle of the Chaos
If you are sitting there today, feeling crushed by a separation or a “failure” of the family unit you sacrificed everything for, hear me: You cannot bridge the gap of a soul that doesn’t want to cross the bridge with you.
Your capacity to love deeply is a superpower, but don’t waste it on hoping someone will develop a heart they don’t possess. Focus on the love that is right in front of you. For me, it’s the way Jack still looks for his brothers, the way MJ is stepping into his young manhood with such grace, and the way Matthew keeps us all laughing even when things feel heavy.
We are still a squad, though smaller. We are still moving. The chaos hasn’t left; it has just changed shape. And while the hole left by Jasper and Mateo is a wound that may never fully close, I refuse to let “hope” for a different past ruin my ability to love the present.
I am a mother, an entrepreneur, and a survivor of a dream. I am enough.