I did not realize how much I had given of myself until it was over, and then I could not get those parts back. They went with the kids when the marriage ended.”
— Jana, participant in my Mosaic Family Study
This quote lingers like a photograph left behind on the fridge door; familiar, but no longer part of the daily story. Not because it is rare, but because it is painfully familiar.
As a clinician, I’ve sat across from stepparents, mothers, fathers, and mentors who poured themselves into raising children they didn’t birth. They helped with homework, attended parent-teacher nights, cooked dinner, and prayed over hospital beds. They did it all without expecting a medal. But when the marriage ended, no one asked how they were coping with losing the kids, too. There was no visitation schedule for their grief.
This is the unspoken ache in mosaic families: unacknowledged parenthood.
A kind of love that was never entirely yours to keep, but you gave everything to it anyway.
I have lived this myself.
I’ve watched my own role vanish, not just because a marriage ended, but because the language of the law had no room for love that was real but not blood. The silence afterward was not just absence; it was disorientation. Birthdays passed. Familiar routines faded. Photos remained, but the presence was gone.
Boundaries in mosaic families are not just emotional tools; they are sacred structures. Without them, we give too much and collapse under the weight of invisible loss. And yet, even with boundaries, the pain still arrives. Because love, true love, never walks away cleanly. It leaves echoes.
Some wounds do not bleed.
They linger.
Like a room still filled with children’s laughter, even after the door has closed.
But here’s what I know:
The grief is real because the love was real.
And even if your name is no longer spoken at the dinner table, the impact of your presence still lives in the hearts you helped shape.
The pieces of your mosaic may have scattered, but the gold that held them was never wasted.
This is the grief behind the mosaic.
And it deserves to be honored.
🖤 Piece United by Love