Dear Aunt B, #5
Dear Aunt B
Things have been very hard the last few years. My dad passed, mom had cancer, my childhood home burned down and I had to rebuilt it. Now my husband of 22 years wants to be free. I’m exhausted and in pain. What’s going on? Thank you. Burned.
Dear Burned,
What you’ve walked through is a lot — the loss of your dad, your mom’s illness, your home literally going up in flames, and now your marriage ending. Anyone would feel flattened by that kind of wave after wave. But let’s pause here, because something important is happening.
Losing a parent is one of life’s universal passages. It feels deeply personal, but it’s also a part of the human journey we will all walk. That doesn’t make it less painful, but it does mean it isn’t a mark of bad luck or punishment. It’s life doing what life does — moving forward, changing form, asking us to hold both love and grief in the same breath.
Your husband's choosing to leave after 22 years is different. That isn’t just loss — it’s a turning point. The kind that forces you to decide: do I keep carrying the weight of what’s burned, or do I step into the future that’s waiting for me? Sometimes what feels like the cruelest blow is actually the catalyst that frees us from living only in the shadow of the past.
You don’t need to rebuild everything overnight. You don’t even need to know exactly what the future looks like yet. What you do need is to remember that you are still here, scarred, maybe, but also stronger and wiser than before. And that spark you’ve kept alive through all of this? That’s the same spark that will light your next chapter.
The past shaped you. The future is calling you. And this moment, painful as it is, is the doorway between them.
And the truth, my friend, you are not burned. You are the phoenix rising.
With fierce hope for what’s ahead,
Aunt B
