Actually, I'm not fine… blog

Chapter 4: Everyday Landmines

Grief has a way of sneaking up on you when you least expect it. It doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t politely knock at the door of your mind. It hides in the corners of your day, in the quiet moments, in the ordinary routines, and then it explodes when you are least prepared. These are the everyday landmines. The tiny, unexpected triggers that turn a normal day into a battlefield of emotion, buried alive feeling the dirt being shoveled into your face of unfulfilled pain.

I was walking through a store the other day, lost in thought, thinking about nothing in particular, when I passed the baby aisle. The soft pastel colors should have been comforting, but instead they hit me like a punch to the gut. Tiny onesies, little socks, baby converse shoes that my daughter had when she had her first steps, wanting to replicate that memory with our baby. My chest tightened instantly. My throat closed. My stomach dropped. I had to stop myself from trembling. For a moment, the world went silent except for the heartbeat in my ears and then the numb feeling crashing into me, of what should have been.

Even the smallest triggers have the power to pierce through the armor I try to wear. Trying to be strong for my husband, daughter… our family, our household. These faint hopeful memories make me imagine what my baby might have been doing at that very moment. Were they kicking? Laughing? Sleeping? Alive in a way I will never witness again. And the sorrow hits harder than I ever thought possible.

Commercials are treacherous. They’re designed to be soft, comforting, innocent. And yet, when a happy baby smiles up at a camera, or a parent cradles their child in perfect light, I feel like the floor beneath me vanishes, falling in a vast of darkness.

That tiny life that was supposed to be ours, the one I had already loved fiercely in my heart, will never roll past me in the sunshine, will never wave at me with tiny fingers, will never be part of the world outside my grief.

I try to protect myself. I try to distract myself with errands, with work, with tasks that make me feel normal. But grief doesn’t respect normal. It has a radar for the smallest emotional cracks. I can be perfectly composed, smiling at a friend, and then a fleeting thought will bring the flood back. Every unexpected reminder is a landmine that detonates with deep sorrow and longing.

What’s cruel about these moments is that they are both random and endless. They don’t come in neat packages. They arrive when I least expect them. They make me cry in public when I thought I was safe. They make me want to run away from everything I once loved. They make me feel isolated, because nobody else sees the triggers the way I do. To the world, I am just walking through a store. To me, I am reliving a lifetime of loss in a single step.

And yet, even in these moments, there is proof of something powerful. Each heartbreak, each wave of grief shows how deep my love already ran. It is proof that the connection I had with my baby, though brief and unseen by the world, existed in a way that cannot be erased. Every sudden burst of sorrow is a reminder that I loved fully, without reservation, without conditions, without the need for proof beyond what my heart already knew.

I have learned to navigate these landmines cautiously. I remind myself that these moments don’t make me weak. They make me human. They are evidence that my grief is real, that my love is real, that my life has been undeniably touched by what I’ve lost.

Sometimes I pause and allow myself to imagine what it would have been like. I picture holding tiny hands, watching a first smile, experiencing quiet mornings together. I let myself feel the love and the ache at the same time. I let the grief and the longing coexist, because I know that even in loss, my baby matters. Even in absence, they are alive in our memory and hearts.

And so I walk carefully through each day, aware that triggers are everywhere and at any given time. I accept that grief will appear in unexpected places, that sorrow is not bound by logic or timing. I accept that every commercial, and every innocent giggle has the power to open my heart and my mind to the loss I carry. And I hold onto the one constant: the love I have for my baby, unbroken by circumstance, unshaken by absence, beyond doubt in its persistence.

These everyday landmines are both cruel and sacred. They hurt, yes, but they also remind me that I have loved and that my love endures. They remind me that loss, though painful, is a measure of the life that mattered. And even when I stumble, even when my heart shatters in public or in private, I carry my baby with me, alive in the smallest moments, in every heartbeat, in every memory that refuses to fade.