You have people who love you. Who show up. Who try to help. And yet...

At 3am, in the dark, in the middle of something no one else can fully enter, you still feel utterly alone.

What's wrong with you?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

I know what it is to be surrounded by love and still feel unreachable. I have been fighting a legal system for my daughter, a battle that has already cost me more than I can easily put into words. And I have people around me. Good people. People who love us both. People who keep telling me they won't let the worst happen.

But here's the thing about that kind of reassurance: it comes from people who don't have to live inside the consequences. They can be bold on my behalf. I can't afford to be. Because if I put a foot wrong, it is my head on the line, not theirs. Their certainty, however well-meaning, becomes another pressure I have to quietly manage on top of everything else I am already carrying.

That's a specific kind of loneliness. The loneliness of being the only one in the room who fully understands what's actually at stake.

There's a difference between being supported and being seen. And I don't think we talk about it enough.

Support is real. My mum has been with me through all of it, living it alongside me, loving us without condition, her door always open. I never doubt that she has my back. That kind of unwavering presence matters more than I can say.

But my mum also cannot see past her own rage. And her rage makes sense, it comes from love, from watching her daughter and granddaughter go through something unthinkable. But rage fills a room. And when you're already overwhelmed, someone else's emotions become another thing you have to navigate. Another weight, even when it's offered as support.

Being seen looks different. I have an amazing friend here, a psychologist, who loves us just as much but brings something my mum, through no fault of her own, cannot always offer. She can separate her own feelings from what's happening. She names the complexity without flinching. She told me once to separate what I feel from what needs doing in the moment, and that one piece of advice has stayed with me through every difficult season since. Not because it fixed anything. Because it acknowledged the reality of what I was in, and gave me something solid to stand on inside it.

She saw me. Clearly, without her own pain clouding the picture. And that reached something that all the love in the world couldn't quite get to.

What I needed, in those hardest moments, wasn't solutions. I needed someone to look at what I was facing and say: I see the complexity. I see how impossible this is. Moving forward in this unknown territory is deeply worrying, and that makes complete sense.

That's it. That's all.

Not reassurance that it would be okay. Not encouragement to be braver than I was able to be. Just someone willing to sit in the uncertainty with me, without needing to make it better, without their discomfort rushing us toward resolution.

Most people can't do that. Not because they don't care, but because sitting with helplessness is uncomfortable. So they reach for words that soothe them as much as you. And you're left feeling like your reality is too much, too complicated, too heavy for the room.

You end up managing their feelings about your situation, on top of your situation itself.

There are times in our lives when we are pushed to the very depths of our own minds. Loneliness is one of those places. It pushes our thoughts to the limits and strips back everything that isn't essential.

What I've learned, slowly, painfully, is that inside that loneliness, there are layers of yourself you have never had to uncover before. Trauma has a way of doing that. It reaches places ordinary life never touches.

And here is what I want you to know: this is a phase. I cannot tell you when it ends. But I can tell you that you will learn things about yourself inside it that you couldn't have learned any other way. You will find out that you are more resilient than you knew. That you have what it takes to keep going, even when keeping going feels like the hardest thing in the world.

You can have support and still feel alone. Both are true. And both are okay.

It doesn't mean the people around you don't love you. It doesn't mean you're ungrateful or broken or asking for too much. It means you're carrying something that exists beyond what love alone can reach, and that is one of the loneliest, most human experiences there is.

I see you.

And if you ever need me, I'm here and I'm a good listener. Reach out.

Lots of Love
Saski xx ❤️💐