Three Years Since Your Due Date

Three years ago today… we made it to your due date.
The day everyone tells you to be excited for.
The day marked on every app, every calendar, every countdown.
The day that’s supposed to mean “any moment now.”

But due dates are never promises.
They’re guesses wrapped in hope.
And looking back now, I can’t help but wonder…
If we would’ve met you that day—if my body would’ve gone into labor right then and there—would you still be here? Would everything have been different?

It’s a question that doesn’t have an answer, but it still lives inside me. It rises up every year when this date comes around, no matter how much healing I’ve done or how much time has passed.

Three years later, my body still remembers before my mind does.
This morning hit me like a wave I didn’t see coming.

The heaviness.
The grief headache.
The emotional exhaustion that feels like I’ve cried for days, even though the tears haven’t fully come.
The way my chest aches in a very particular way—almost like my heart is trying to remind me of something I already know too well:

You should be here.

We should have a wild, beautiful almost-three-year-old running around the house as we head into Christmas. You should be helping your siblings decorate the tree, pulling ornaments off the lower branches, giggling, making messes, and filling our home with the kind of noise that only toddlers can make.

Instead, we live in the “would have beens” and “should have beens.”
We live in the honoring, the remembering, the wondering.

December has always been a meaningful month, but now it carries this weight—your weight. It’s the month we were supposed to meet you. The month we said hello and goodbye. The month that changed everything. The month my body seems to grieve even before I consciously do, as if it holds an imprint of you somewhere deep inside.

Three years later, the milestones don’t get easier.
I don’t expect them to.
They’re sacred.
They’re painful.
They’re holy ground in their own way.

Every year, I imagine who you’d be, how big you’d be, what your personality would look like. I imagine how differently this season would feel if you were here in my arms instead of held in my heart.

Grief changes, but it never disappears.
It ebbs, it flows, it softens, it sharpens.
And on days like today—your due date—it hits with a force that reminds me just how deeply I love you.

So today, we honor you.
We speak your name.
We make room for the ache and the beauty.
We let ourselves feel it all.

You are still part of us.
Still part of our December.
Still part of our story.
You always will be.

I miss you today and every day, my sweet girl.

Thank you for the way you continue to shape us, stretch us, break us open, and teach us what love really is.