She looked down at her tea, like it held the answers.
“You don’t understand,” she said softly. “I spent 30 years putting everyone first—your dad, you kids, the house. I don’t regret it, but somewhere along the way… I lost myself. Now that I’ve finally got my time back, I’m not giving it up.”
Then she looked at me with the same tired eyes I remembered from my teenage years.
“I love you. I love your son. But love doesn’t mean I owe you my time.”
For days, I spiraled. My partner, Arel, tried to stay positive—he even picked up extra shifts at the auto shop—but no matter how we crunched the numbers, things weren’t adding up. I was panicking about money, trying to sell old baby gear, and calculating how far our savings would stretch
