If you have read Love Still Speaks , then you have already heard the cry from the center of my soul. That first post was the tearing open, the raw, unfiltered wound of a wife who lost her husband to something the world quickly named, but I could not yet fathom. It was me, standing in the ash and saying, “This is not the end.” Not of his story. Not of mine. But grief does not unravel in a single post. It lingers. It festers. It shows up in unexpected moments, in the silence between sentences, in the ache behind a smile. And so this second post picks up not to explain, but to continue. To give shape to what still feels shapeless. To explore the invisible weight that so many carry, especially those who look the strongest. Because sometimes, the loudest cries come from the quietest hearts.
This is for the ones who smile through the ache.
This is for the ones no one thinks to check on.
This is for the ones holding it all … until they can’t.
And to those who read Love Still Speaks and whispered, “Me too,” … I see you. You are not alone.
“Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.” — Forrest Gump
Those words used to sound whimsical to me. Now they echo with a kind of haunting precision. Because on 7 and 8 April 2025, life handed me something I could never have imagined. Something bitter. Something that did not fit into any category of flavour or form. And I had no choice but to taste it. You never think that these things would happen to you … until they do.
Life, for many of us, is a relentless race. It’s not just against time but against ourselves and expectation. We fight against generational echoes telling us to push, strive, and prove. Each day, we wake up and place our heads to the plough. We push hard to provide for our children. We push hard to secure a future. We strive to be seen as competent, collected, and accomplished. We push hard against the places we come from. We want to rise. We aim to become more than what the world said we could be.,, Better. Smarter. Stronger…. and that’s OK. We should all strive to be the best versions of ourselves. We should become the pioneers of our bloodlines. We can break the limitations of our ancestors in faith and courage….In the quiet, often unspoken places of our striving, some begin to lose air. The pressure, even when fuelled by noble intentions, can become a weight. And when that pressure is coupled with silence, the soul begins to splinter.
We don’t talk enough about how ambition and exhaustion can intertwine. How the drive to hold everything together can quietly unravel the one doing the holding. Sometimes, the mask becomes so convincing, even to ourselves, that we forget that it is there. We confuse our performance for reality. We move through the days with practiced ease, holding it all together, managing, performing, appearing fine. But behind the competence, behind the polished exterior, there can be a quiet, mounting cost. A soul stretched too thin. A heart quietly fraying.
And no one talks about what happens when the one who holds everyone else…the calm one, the strong one, the kind one… is the one who breaks.
No one saw it coming. Not on 7 April 2025. Not on 8 April 2025. The dates that my Ken went missing. The date when he was found. And maybe that is why I still cannot speak about those days without my chest tightening. Those two dates are etched into me, but I have not found the courage nor the language to face them head-on. Not yet. The grief is too raw, the reality too jagged. All I know is that in a matter of moments, the landscape of my life, and my children’s lives were rewritten with a kind of brutal finality that still feels too large to hold. One day, I will tell that part of the story. But today is not that day.
Ken and I came from humble beginnings. Nothing was handed to us…not opportunity, not comfort, not security. Everything we built was hard-earned. We worked with purpose, with faith, and with a fire inside us to create a life for our children that looked different to the one we inherited. We did not just work hard to earn a living , we worked hard to unlearn the potholes of ancestry. We pushed against the institutionalised patriarchy that told men to be stoic and silent, that told women to be submissive and small in contexts contrary to Biblical interpretation. We pushed against the layered intersections of race and class, of caste and cultural rigidity. We tore through the boxes that we were handed. Boxes that tried to define us by surname, tradition, caste, background, or skin tone. We refused to let our children grow up thinking their worth was tied to outdated structures or religious expectations. We tried to teach them love, not as duty, but as freedom. Not as a role, but as a way of being.
I see now what we failed to reckon with… the crushing inheritance of expectation placed on Ken’s shoulders from the time he was a boy. He was always the one who had to shine: Ken, the A-aggregate student; Ken, the accomplished athlete who earned his provincial sporting colours; Ken, the ideal son. Ken the perfect physiotherapist. And because he was so effortlessly loving, the most devoted husband and the most present father… it became too easy, almost instinctive, to hold him to a silent, generational script of perfection. Ken, the man who had to be everything to everyone, always..
The weight of expectation… it was relentless. It came like a ton of bricks, pressing down on our shoulders, passed from generation to generation. For Ken, a beautiful and kind mixed-race man, the expectations were silent. He was raised in a deeply Indian, religiously observant home. The expectations were silent but loud. Sons are often expected to carry the pride of the family. They are also expected to uphold the legacy of lineage. The duty is to be unshakably strong. To lead but never break. To protect but never cry. To provide, but never rest. No one should have to carry the burden of expectation and the pressure of perfection. None of us encapsulates perfection, except for God. Yet, Ken carried it. Quietly. Faithfully. Until he couldn’t. It’s an expectation that I will never pass on to my son.
So many across the intersections of race, culture, and tradition carry the same weight. Unseen, inherited, and silently endured. But that’s a post for another time. What I can speak to is the sanctuary we built in our own home for our kids…a refuge from those expectations. Our nuclear family was authentic. What you saw was who we were. It was never performative. Never polished for the sake of perception. Ken was the most humble, pure, gentle, and real man that I have ever known. There was no mask, no curated version of himself. He was the same whether in our home, at work, or out in the world.
To be loved intensely and completely by such a man, and to love him with the same intensity in return, is a blessing rare enough to be sacred. And yet, in the quiet miracle of God’s grace, I was given that gift. He gave me Ken. He gave me his heart , not as something to be earned or proven, but as something offered, freely and fully, every single day. There was no performance in our love, no theatre for public approval. What we lived was real, unedited, and rooted in something deeper than sentiment. It was covenant. Our lives, like most couples, were by no means perfect, but we fought hard to preserve the love we had for each other, and for our children. We fought to protect them from the poisonous indoctrinations of the world system. We did not want them shaped by , colour-based worth, or rigid cultural scripts. We did not want shame-based religiosity and its associated legalisms imposed on them. Instead… we wanted them to operate in faith and in relationship with God
And yet, here I am, standing, though the ground beneath me is not what it was. Still speaking, though my voice sometimes trembles under the weight of absence. Still trying to make sense of something that defies reason. I feel a grief so thick it fogs up memory. There is a silence so loud it echoes even when the house is full. Because loss, this loss, does not come gently. It does not tap on the door and wait to be invited in. It crashes through the roof and rearranges the furniture of your soul. And when the dust settles, you are left holding both the brokenness and the beauty in the same trembling hands.
Let me be brutal: This post is not written for comfort. It is written for the aching truth that hides beneath so many smiles, behind so many seemingly put-together lives. It is written for anyone who has found themselves standing on the edge, contemplating the unthinkable. My prayer is simple. If you are considering ending your life, I hope that you read this. I hope it gives you pause. Not guilt. Not shame. Pause. A moment long enough to think again. Long enough to consider not what will end, but rather the resultant devastation left behind. The lives unravelled. The children still needing your love. The spouse who will wait at the door for a sound that never comes. The parent whose heart you hold in your hands and in your very breath.
You matter more than you know. Your worth is not defined by what you have done or couldn’t do. God sees you through eyes of love, not performance.
In Jeremiah 31:3, He declares:
“I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.”
This is the love that covers you even now. The love that waits. That weeps with you. That whispers, “Stay.”
Like adultery, like murder, like slander, etc, suicide is not an unforgivable sin. Only blasphemy against the Holy Spirit carries that weight. (Mark 3:28–29 (NIV)). Let me say this clearly. I am a wife to a husband who, on the face of it, appears to have committed suicide. SUICIDE IS NOT A HOLY ACT. It is not the path God intends for His beloved. YOU are GOD’S BELOVED. Do you even understand the scale of that statement? The devil is a LIAR. The discouragement that he whispers to you is a lie from the pit of hell. The shame that he inflicts on you is also a lie. These lies are meant to strip you of your purpose and devastate those that are left behind.
“Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit…? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honour God with your bodies.” — 1 Corinthians 6:19–20
“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning…” — Lamentations 3:22–23
I write this not to condemn. I write to draw you back. I want to hold your face in trembling hands and say: this is not the end. The pain you are in now does not define your eternity. Your despair is not greater than His mercy. God does not love you less for your weakness. He is the One who comes close to the crushed, who gathers the shattered, who breathes life into dust.
Still, I want to speak directly to you. You are the one who is hurting and questioning. You are slipping beneath the weight of pain no one else sees. You may not believe this now, but your life is irreplaceable. You are not a burden. You are not invisible. You are not beyond saving. You matter. You are valuable , You are worthy . God does not measure your worth by your performance. He does not measure it by your productivity. He does not measure it by what flawed people think about you. He does not measure it by your ability to hold it all together. He sees you. He formed you. He calls you by name. He says you are His.
Please pause. Let this be the moment you stop and breathe. Not because you are wrong for feeling overwhelmed, but because there is more for you than this. There is healing beyond what you can see. There is mercy waiting with the morning. There is life …precious, beautiful, meaningful life on the other side of this night
I write this not because I have found the right words. I haven’t. I write this because I owe it to the love that Ken and I shared, to the truth we lived, and to the hope that maybe, somewhere in these words, someone else will feel less alone.
And maybe that’s the thing about life… about this box of chocolates that we are all handed. It’s not just about the sweetness. It’s about learning to live through the unexpected textures, the hollow centres, the ones that leave a bitter taste. You do not get to choose what you bite into. But you do get to choose how you hold it, how you speak of it, and what you do with what is left.
Grief has become part of my portion. But so has gratitude. So has memory. So has love.
Ken is not here in body, but I see so much of him in the children we raised and the son that I will continue to raise alone. I see him in the love we built, in the truth we lived, and now, in these words I write. In as much as I love him.I write this not to elevate him….but to GLORIFY GOD who gives me the strength to push through the pain and hopefully reach others who need to be seen and understood.
If you are reading this, if you have tasted something bitter, if you are holding grief and cannot name it… then let this be your permission to feel.
To ask.
To cry.
To hope.
Because love still speaks. And I will keep speaking too.
Even here. Even now. Even when I don’t know what’s coming next in the box.
If you are reading this and walking through your own valley of loss or despair, let these words remind you of a greater truth:
You Are Not Alone – Get Help
There is hope. People are waiting to stand with you, to talk with you, to remind you that your life matters. Click here for a link to international suicide hotlines. OR click here to access free mental health support in your country.
Looking Ahead — Post 3: The Morning After Midnight
In the next post, I will take you into the day after the world changed. Not the dramatic moment of loss, but the quiet, suffocating ache that follows it. The Morning After Midnight is not just about grief , it’s about what happens when the sun rises but nothing feels light. It’s about what it means to wake up in a world where your person is gone, and how grief arrives before your eyes open. For those contemplating suicide, I hope this glimpse into what follows, the raw, disorienting aftermath, will bring pause. And for those left behind, I pray it will help you feel less alone. There is truth. There is pain. And even here… there is still hope…. Look out for it.
Mend 
Leave a comment