One More Day: Why I Keep On Fighting

I’m alive because my kids deserve it. Not because I want to be.

That’s the part nobody wants to say out loud. People want survival stories to sound hopeful and inspiring, but the truth is, some days survival feels like dragging myself through hell with no end in sight. Every day without my kids feels like dying in slow motion. Every morning I wake up with a weight crushing my chest, my legs like lead, my thoughts clawing at me until I can barely breathe. It doesn’t get lighter. It doesn’t get easier.

But I stay.

Not because I feel strong. Not because I want to. I stay because I refuse to let their story be this: “my dad abandoned me and my mom killed herself.” That’s not the ending they deserve.

So I fight through the suffocation. I force one foot in front of the other, even when it feels like walking through concrete. I whisper to myself—sometimes a dozen times a day—“just one more day.” That’s the mantra that carries me. Not forever. Not until it’s better. Just one more day. Over and over again.

When I promised my kids I’d never stop fighting, I thought I meant for them. For our home. For our family. I thought it meant battling systems, people, and circumstances that tore at us. I didn’t know that promise also meant fighting for myself. Fighting to breathe when I didn’t want to. Fighting to keep my heart beating when the weight told me to quit.

I didn’t understand that staying alive would become part of the fight.

But it has. And it’s the hardest battle I’ve ever faced.

The truth is, I love my children more than I will ever love myself. That love is what keeps me here when everything else in me wants to disappear. It’s what drags me out of bed when my body begs me to sink back under the covers and vanish. It’s what keeps me breathing through the nights when silence feels unbearable.

Because I promised. And I don’t break promises to them.

So I stay. I stay through the heaviness. Through the suffocating hours. Through the ache of being alive when I don’t want to be. I stay because their story deserves more than tragedy. I stay because love—fierce, gut-deep, sacrificial love—is stronger than despair.

Every day I tell myself: “One more day.” One more day of showing up. One more day of refusing to let darkness define the story. One more day of choosing them, even when I can’t choose myself.

Maybe one day, the weight will lift. Maybe it won’t. But even if it never does, my kids will know this: their mother stayed. She fought. She never stopped.

And that has to be enough.