The Quiet Strength Beside Me

December 14, 2025

For our entire marriage, and even more so over the last eleven and a half months, the steadiness in my life has been Maria.

There are people in this world who carry their strength loudly, like a blazing fire. Then there are the ones like her, strength that moves quietly, steadily, like roots beneath the soil. You don’t always see it at first glance, but everything in your life is standing because of it. That’s what she is for me. For our boys. For the people who depend on her every day.

Even from miles away, she continues to be an incredible manager and leader for her team back home. I hear it in her voice when she talks about them, the responsibility she feels, the care she gives, the way she tries to shield them from the weight she’s carrying here. She listens to them, guides them, supports them, and somehow still finds the mental and emotional space to show up for her work family with the same dedication she’s giving to ours. It’s remarkable. Honestly, it takes my breath away.

Then there’s the way she mothers our boys, the gentleness, the steady hand, the fierce protectiveness. She knows when they need warmth and softness, and she knows when they need honesty and the hard truth, even though giving it costs her something. She’s teaching them how to stand tall in a world that isn’t always kind. She’s teaching them how to feel and how to endure. She’s doing all of it while carrying her own heartbreak, her own fears, her own exhaustion. Yet she never lets them feel alone. Not for one second.

Through this entire journey, the scans, the needles, the long nights, the uncertainty, she has been by my side in every possible way. When the news is overwhelming, when the ground shifts under us, she somehow becomes even more present. I’ve watched her take in gut-punching updates, hold her breath to steady herself, and immediately slip into protector mode. She pulls out her notepad takes notes, asks questions, makes sure nothing gets lost in the chaos. She does this because she wants, (no, needs,) to make the path easier for me to walk. She wants to be able to sit with me later, explain things clearly and gently, so I don’t have to face it alone.

That kind of love… it’s not performative. It’s not loud. It’s not dramatic. It’s a thousand quiet acts of devotion stitched into the fabric of our days. It’s holding my hand when I’m too tired to talk. It’s rubbing my back when the treatments knock me down. It’s remembering the questions I forget to ask. It’s sleeping lightly so she can hear if I need something in the middle of the night. It’s courage disguised as routine.

She has cried, but she always waits until I’m steady. She has felt fear, but she meets it with resolve every single day. She is breaking and rebuilding herself constantly, and somehow she still shows up with love in her hands.

Maria is the reason I stand. She is the reason I keep fighting. She is the quiet reminder that this battle isn’t mine alone; it’s ours. She is carrying just as much of it as I am.

One day, when all of this is behind us, our boys will understand the full depth of what their mother did, how she shielded them, how she shielded me, how she held our world together when it was trying to fall apart. They’ll understand the strength it takes to be gentle, the courage it takes to stay present in pain, and the love it takes to keep showing up when the nights get long.

I don’t know if I’ll ever find words big enough to honor what she’s done for me, but I can keep trying. I can tell the world. I can name her strength, her tenderness, her brilliance, her resilience. I can keep fighting. For her. For us. For the life she is helping me hold onto.

She is my partner, my anchor, my shelter, and my reminder of who I am even on the days I don’t feel like myself. Every day, in a thousand unseen ways, she saves me.

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She Saves Me

She saves me

in the quiet ways,

a hand on mine,

a steady breath,

a whispered “I’m here.”

She saves me

with strength she never names,

with tears she waits to release,

with love she sets around me

like a shield.

She saves me

every day,

in a hundred small moments

no one else sees.

Because she does

I keep fighting.

I keep rising.

I keep believing.

She saves me.