That was two months ago.
Now, when I wake up and hear Dan moving around in the kitchen, or feel him shift beside me in bed, I know I chose the right path. Not a perfect one. Not an easy one. But a real one.
He gave me two beautiful children, years of laughter, a sense of home. That chapter doesn’t disappear because another one has begun.
Dan is my second chapter. Not a replacement, not a shadow, but his own solid, steady presence in a life that keeps changing.
If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that the heart can break and still find room to love again. Loving someone new does not erase the love that came before. It simply proves how deeply we are capable of caring.
So if you are someone who has loved and lost, someone who worries it is “too late” or “too complicated” to have another chance at happiness, hear this from a woman who married her late husband’s best friend and stood in front of a safe on her wedding night, terrified of what she might learn:
Life is messy. Love is complicated. But sometimes, even through all that, things still work out exactly the way they are meant to.
