The Dreams We Didn’t Know We’d Have to Grieve

Before we ever held our babies in our arms, many of us already carried dreams in our hearts. First birthdays and first days of school. Dance recitals and soccer games. College move-ins. Careers. Weddings. A life imagined. A future assumed.

But when a diagnosis comes—when you’re told your child has epilepsy, or Down syndrome, or a congenital heart defect, or cerebral palsy—or a rare disease so uncommon you have to teach the doctors how to spell it—those dreams begin to shift. Sometimes they vanish. And no one really prepares you for the ache that comes with that kind of loss.

This episode is about that grief. The kind that arrives before the meal trains, before the therapies, before the new routines. The kind that shows up long before acceptance or strength or even language. If you’ve ever found yourself grieving the version of motherhood you never got to have… this one is for you.