The Courage to Love Again

There’s a quiet kind of love that finds you when you least expect it — not the sweeping, storybook kind, but one that arrives like the tide. Soft. Steady. Sure.I wasn’t looking for it. After all, love had already been a chapter in my story — or so I thought. I’d lived a full life: marriage, motherhood, family, faith. I believed that part of me was complete. But somewhere between endings and beginnings, love came again. Not loud or dramatic, just real.

And it feels, in many ways, like the very first time.

For years, I lived in the same house but not the same life. Our marriage had long turned into a kind of quiet companionship — two people coexisting, raising children, keeping the peace. We were good at that. We were partners in responsibility, if not in joy. When the divorce finally came, it wasn’t sudden. It was the final ripple of something that had already ebbed away. Three years have passed since, and yet, the emotional tide still ebbs and flows — not with regret, but with remembrance.

My children — my heart, my everything — still carry the pain of that ending. I understand. To all of us, family is sacred and permanent. Faith, our shared Catholic roots, make it harder for them to see that sometimes love changes shape, but it doesn’t disappear. It transforms.

They see their father moving forward, and somehow, that sits differently. But when it’s me — their mother, their safe place — it feels like a betrayal of what once was. I don’t blame them. It’s hard to reconcile the woman who read bedtime stories and baked birthday cakes with the woman now holding someone else’s hand at sunset.

But here’s what I’ve learned: loving again doesn’t erase the love that came before. It expands it. It honors the life that made me who I am — the mother, the wife, the woman of faith — and gives me permission to keep growing.

This love feels different. It’s not born from youth or necessity or dreams of forever. It’s born from knowing who I am. It’s laughter over coffee, soft glances that say, ‘I see you,’ and the comfort of being fully myself — no masks, no pretending, no performing. It’s me, as I am, seen and loved anyway.

Still, there are moments when the guilt creeps in — when I wonder what my children think, whether they feel replaced or left behind. But love and motherhood are not competitions. My heart is vast enough for both.

And maybe that’s what I want them to see — not rebellion against faith or family, but redemption through joy. I want them to know that their mother is still capable of wonder, still open to grace, still learning that God’s love doesn’t end with one chapter of our lives.

This is not about choosing to love over family — it’s about choosing wholeness. Choosing to live honestly, to feel deeply, to believe that even after heartbreak and years of quiet endurance, we are still worthy of joy.

I love my sons with everything I am. But this — this chapter of love and peace — is me time. Not selfish, but sacred. Because somewhere between the words and the waves, I found that love is not a single story. It’s the tide — always returning, always reshaping the shore.