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The transition from being a wife and new mother to an outcast occurred with a cold, clinical efficiency that I am still struggling to process. Two days after I buried my husband, Caleb, I found myself standing on the threshold of the apartment we had shared, clutching our three-week-old son, Noah. My mother-in-law, Deborah, stood in the doorway, her face a mask of calculated indifference. “You and your child mean nothing to me,” she said, her voice devoid of even a flicker of mourning. Before I could find the words to ask where a grieving woman with a newborn was supposed to go, the lock clicked shut, severing my last tie to the life I had known.
I am Mia, and at twenty-four, I became a widow and a homeless mother in the span of forty-eight hours. As I walked away with nothing but a suitcase, a diaper bag, and Caleb’s old hoodie—which still carried the faint, heartbreaking scent of him—I felt like a ghost.
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