The paradox of peace

Peace showed up in my life after my son died.

And that’s the sick paradox.

I didn’t get peace the way I prayed for it through sobriety, healing, repair, and time. I got peace because the chaos finally stopped. The constant hypervigilance. The endless crises. The feeling that if I didn’t hold it all together, everything would collapse.

So yeah… there’s relief. My body can finally exhale.

But that relief comes with anger and grief, because the price of that quiet was a loss I never agreed to pay. And sometimes when his name gets mentioned in a calm moment, something in me flinches not because I don’t love him, but because my system remembers what it cost to live inside that storm.

This is what I’m learning:

Peace can be real and still feel unfair.

And I’m allowed to receive it without pretending I’m okay with how it arrived.