When Losing Sana Changed My Faith

When Losing Sana Changed My Faith There are losses that change your life, and then there are losses that change the way you see life itself. Losing Sana did both. Before Sana, I may not have had answers to every question about faith, life, and destiny, but there was a part of me that trusted. I believed that, even when life was difficult, there was a larger plan we could not always understand. Faith offered comfort, a sense of order, and the reassurance that perhaps there were reasons behind the things that happened to us. Then I lost my daughter. And something inside me changed. How do you continue to believe in a plan when that plan takes away your child? How do you reconcile the idea of divine mercy with the suffering of someone so young? How do you accept that a daughter who had so much life ahead of her, so much love to give, and so much she wanted to do could be taken away? I have asked these questions in the quiet moments, in the middle of the night, and in the spaces where grief finds me when I least expect it. I do not always know what I believe anymore. Perhaps the hardest part of grief is that it does not only take away the person you love. It can take away the certainty you once had about the world. The beliefs that helped you make sense of life can suddenly feel fragile. The words that once brought comfort may no longer reach the place where your pain lives. People often speak about faith as something that carries us through suffering. They tell us to trust, to surrender, to accept that there are things beyond our understanding. I know these words come from a place of love. But when you have lost your child, understanding is not necessarily what you are looking for. You are looking for your child. You want her voice, her laughter, her opinions, her presence in the next room. You want the ordinary moments you never imagined you would have to live without. No explanation can replace those things. I sometimes wonder whether my struggle with faith is a sign that I have lost it, or whether I am simply too wounded to reach it in the way I once could. Perhaps there is a difference between rejecting faith and being unable to find comfort in it. Perhaps questioning is what happens when the heart encounters something the mind cannot reconcile. I do not want to pretend that I have found peace with what happened to Sana. I have not. There are days when I can speak about her with gratitude for the life she lived, and there are days when the unfairness of her absence overwhelms everything else. I can recognise the beauty she brought into this world and still question why she could not have had more time in it. Both feelings can exist together. Sana was not simply my daughter. She was a person with her own convictions, her own understanding of the world, and her own way of finding meaning. She cared deeply about people, about justice, about mental health, and about making the world kinder. She had a tenderness towards children and a particular ability to see something in people that they did not always see in themselves. When I think of her, I do not think only about her death. I think about how she lived. I think about the love she gave, the people she touched, the conversations we shared, and the things she believed mattered. And perhaps that is where I find myself now: not necessarily closer to the faith I once knew, but still searching for meaning in the life she lived. I wonder whether faith has to mean having answers. Whether it can exist alongside anger, doubt, and disappointment. Whether I can question the universe and still remain open to wonder. Whether I can admit that I do not understand why Sana died without having to force myself into an acceptance I am not ready for. I am learning that grief does not follow anyone else's timetable, and perhaps faith does not either. I cannot promise that my beliefs will return to what they once were. I cannot say that everything happens for a reason, because I do not know that. I cannot offer a neat conclusion to a story that has left so many unanswered questions in its wake. What I know is that I loved Sana with a love that death has not diminished. I know that her life mattered. I know that the kindness she showed, the ideas she championed, and the love she left behind continue to have an impact. I know that I carry her with me in ways both visible and invisible, sometimes through a memory that makes me smile, sometimes through a sudden ache that takes my breath away. And I know that I am allowed to be honest about the questions her death has left me with. Perhaps, for now, that honesty is the only place from which I can begin. I do not know whether I will find my way back to the faith I once had. Perhaps I will discover a different kind of faith, one that does not demand certainty, one that allows questions to remain unanswered, one that makes room for sorrow without asking me to explain it away. Or perhaps I will simply learn to live with the uncertainty. For now, I miss my daughter. I question things I once accepted. I struggle with beliefs that once offered reassurance. And I continue to search for a way to hold the enormity of my loss alongside the beauty of having been Sana's mother. I wish I could ask her what she thinks about all of this. I can imagine the conversations we might have had, the questions she might have asked me in return, and the different perspectives she might have offered. But I cannot have those conversations anymore. So I write. I write because I need somewhere to put the questions that have no answers. I write because loving Sana remains one of the deepest truths of my life, even when other truths feel uncertain. I write because her story deserves to be remembered not only through the tragedy of losing her, but through the extraordinary person she was. Maybe faith, for me, is no longer about knowing. Maybe it is about continuing to love when I do not understand. About allowing myself to grieve without pretending to be at peace. About staying open to the possibility of meaning, even when I cannot see it. I am not there every day. Some days, I cannot find that possibility at all. And perhaps that is okay. Because I am still Sana's mother. I am still learning how to live in a world without her. And I am still trying to understand what faith means to a heart that has been broken in a way it never imagined possible. I do not have answers. I only have my love for her, my memories of her, and the hope that one day the questions will hurt a little less. Until then, I will keep writing her into the world. Because although I have lost the certainty I once had about faith, I have not lost the love that makes Sana an enduring part of who I am. And that love is something I will carry for the rest of my life.