07/31/2025
❤️
When you’re raising a disabled child, you lose friendships. They don’t usually end with a fight or some big falling out—they just fade.
Birthday parties get harder to make.
Campouts become memories.
Girls’ nights feel more like reminders of how different your world has become.
And you start declining invitations—not because anyone did anything wrong, but because you changed.
You used to be able to drop everything to do anything.
Now? You can’t drop anything.
Your time isn’t your own anymore. Your energy is already spent before the day even begins. So, you change—because you have to.
And the truth is, most people don’t know how to show up in a life like this.
So they drift.
And you let them.
Not out of anger on either end.
Not because either of you stopped caring.
But because keeping up takes an energy you just don’t have anymore.
And that? That’s a special kind of grief no one talks about.
The grief you feel as you scroll through pictures of events you weren’t invited to—not because they didn’t want you there, but because they assumed you’d say no.
You watch friendships that used to feel easy become strained, awkward, filled with long pauses and “we should get together soon” texts that never happen.
And it hurts.
Because for all the love you have for this life, it’s lonely.
It’s isolating.
And sometimes, late at night when the house is finally quiet, you can’t help but think about the life where friendship was simple, spontaneous, and easy and you wonder if anyone notices you’re gone.
No one prepares you for that kind of loneliness. No one tells you how heavy it will feel to love this life fiercely yet still ache for the one you left behind.
But here’s what no one tells you either:
A few will stay.
And sometimes, someone new will step right into your chaos—and choose not to leave.
And those people?
They’re everything.
(Next up: The Friends Who Stay)
