I thought that chapter was closed. My ex-husband’s name hadn’t left my lips in years—until my daughter, Clara, sat on my couch, hand on her belly, and said she was naming her baby after him.
“After everything he did to me?” I asked.
She looked at me softly. “His wife saved my life.”
Clara had fainted at work, gone to her dad’s, and Mila—the woman he left me for—had rushed her to the hospital. A blood clot. Minutes from dying.
I’d spent years resenting that woman. Now she was the reason my daughter was alive.
At the baby shower, Mila approached me quietly. “Thank you for raising Clara,” she said. “She’s kinder than I deserve.”
I didn’t forgive her—but I understood her.
Clara named her son Jonas. When I held him, the name didn’t belong to the man who hurt me—it belonged to the warmth sleeping on my chest.
Forgiveness isn’t forgetting. It’s letting your joy stop paying rent to the past.
