Am I a terrible person for following a stranger’s child through a park because she looked like my daughter?
I (40F) lost my daughter Brianna four years ago. She was seven. It was sudden – a heart condition nobody knew about, and then she was just gone. I have a son, Marcus (now 12), and a husband, Dale, and we’ve kept going the way you do when you don’t have a choice. But I want to be honest with you, because people online always say “provide context” – I am not okay. I have never been okay. I go to therapy every other Thursday and I still sleep with Brianna’s cardigan on the pillow next to me.
I was at Ridgewood Park last Saturday. Marcus was at a friend’s house and I just needed to walk somewhere that wasn’t my living room.
That’s when I saw her.
A little girl, maybe eight or nine, wearing a yellow jacket, running toward the climbing structure. Same hair. Same way of holding her arms out when she ran, kind of floppy, like she didn’t care if she looked silly. My heart completely stopped.
I stood there for probably thirty seconds and then I started walking toward her.
I want to be clear – I didn’t touch her, I didn’t speak to her, I didn’t try to take her anywhere. I just walked behind her. Watched her climb. When she ran to the swings I walked to the swings. I stayed maybe fifteen, twenty feet back the whole time. I know how this sounds. I KNOW.
After about ten minutes, a woman – her mom, obviously – came over from a bench and looked right at me.
She said, “Can I help you?”
I started crying immediately, which I’m sure made everything so much worse.
I said something like, “I’m so sorry, your daughter just reminded me of someone.”
She grabbed her daughter by the hand and said, “You need to leave. Right now. I’m calling someone if you don’t leave.”
I left. I walked back to my car and sat there for an hour.
I told my therapist. I told my friend Donna. Donna said I didn’t do anything wrong and the mom overreacted. My husband thinks I need to tell my psychiatrist and adjust my medication. My sister thinks I owe that woman an apology and that what I did was “not okay, honestly, not even a little.”
My friends and family are completely split and now I can’t stop thinking about it.
Here’s the part I haven’t told anyone yet.
When I was sitting in my car, still crying, I pulled out my phone to call Dale – and I saw that the woman had somehow found my Instagram. Private account. She’d sent me a message.
I opened it. And when I read what she wrote –
What She Said
I sat in the car for a long time before I could actually read the whole thing.
My first instinct, seeing the notification, was pure dread. I thought it was going to be something that destroyed me. A threat. A screenshot she was going to post somewhere. Something that would make me have to explain myself to Dale, to Marcus, to everyone.
I almost didn’t open it.
But I did, because I’m the kind of person who picks at things that hurt.
The message was long. Longer than I expected. And it didn’t start the way I thought it would.
It started with: “I think I owe you an apology.”
I read that sentence four times.
She said her name was Gwen. She said after I walked away she kept thinking about my face, about the way I started crying before I’d even gotten a full sentence out. She said she’d gone back to her bench and watched me walk to the parking lot and she felt something shift in her, like she’d done something she couldn’t undo. She said her daughter, whose name is Piper, had asked why the lady was sad.
Gwen had said she didn’t know.
But then she’d looked me up. She didn’t explain how she found me, and I don’t know, maybe a mutual follow, maybe she saw my face somewhere, maybe she’s just smarter about that stuff than I am. She found my account and she scrolled back far enough to find the posts about Brianna.
The birthday post I do every year. The one with the yellow dress.
She wrote: “Your daughter was beautiful. I’m so sorry. I should not have spoken to you the way I did. I was scared and I reacted and I’m sorry.”
That was it. That was the whole thing, more or less.
I sat in my car in the Ridgewood Park lot and I read it six or seven times and then I put my phone face-down on the passenger seat and I stared at the windshield for a while.
The Part I’ve Been Sitting With
Here’s what I haven’t said to my therapist yet, or to Donna, or to Dale.
I wasn’t entirely in my right mind when I followed that little girl.
I don’t mean that in a scary way. I mean it in the way where there’s a part of grief that lives below the thinking part of your brain, and sometimes it just moves your body without asking. I didn’t make a decision to follow her. I was just suddenly walking. My feet were already going.
For a few minutes, maybe less, maybe more, I don’t know, I was somewhere else.
I was at the park on Clement Street where Brianna liked to go on Sunday mornings. The one with the blue slide she said was her favorite because it was faster. I was watching her run. I was watching those floppy arms, that specific way she moved, like her body was always slightly too excited for the speed she was going.
I wasn’t at Ridgewood. I wasn’t forty years old. I wasn’t the woman who has slept badly for four years and cried in a therapist’s office every other Thursday.
I was just her mom, watching her play.
And then Gwen said “Can I help you?” and I came back.
The crying wasn’t embarrassment. It wasn’t even grief, exactly. It was the return. That horrible lurch of coming back into the real version of your life after you’ve been somewhere better for a few minutes.
Donna says the mom overreacted. My sister says I was wrong. They’re both right. That’s the part nobody in my life seems willing to hold at the same time.
What I Did Next
I wrote back to Gwen.
I wrote and deleted probably eight versions of it. The first one was too long and explained too much. The second one was three sentences and felt cold. One of them I almost sent and then didn’t because I’d used the word “closure” and I hate that word.
What I finally sent was something like:
“Thank you for writing. You didn’t owe me anything and you were right to protect your daughter. I’m sorry I frightened you. Brianna would have been eleven this March.”
I don’t know why I added that last part. It just came out.
Gwen wrote back in maybe twenty minutes.
She said: “Piper turns nine in April. I’m going to hug her extra tonight.”
That was it.
I cried again, but differently. Softer. Like something had been wrung out.
The Question I Actually Came Here to Ask
So. Am I a terrible person.
Here’s what I know: I scared a woman. I scared her enough that she was ready to call the police. Her daughter is nine years old and she had a stranger following her around a playground and that is not okay. My sister is correct. That is not okay, not even a little.
Here’s what else I know: I am a mother who lost her child and I saw her face on someone else’s kid and my body moved before my brain could stop it. I stayed back. I didn’t speak to the child. I didn’t touch her. I left when I was asked to leave.
I don’t think I’m a terrible person. But I did a thing that could have looked terrible to anyone watching, and “I was grieving” is not a magic sentence that makes other people’s fear invalid.
My husband wants me to call my psychiatrist Monday morning. I already texted her. We’re talking Tuesday.
My therapist, when I told her, got very quiet for a moment and then said, “Tell me what those ten minutes felt like.” Not “that was wrong” and not “you’re fine.” Just: tell me what it felt like.
I’ve been trying to answer that question all week.
What Those Ten Minutes Felt Like
Like being allowed back in somewhere after a long time outside in the cold.
Like the specific relief of a bad dream ending, except in reverse, because I was the one who was going to have to wake up.
I watched that little girl climb the structure and hang off the bar with her legs dangling and laugh at something, I don’t know what, maybe nothing, maybe just the feeling of hanging. Brianna used to do that. Just laugh at the physical fact of being in a body that could do things.
I stood fifteen feet away and I thought: she’s okay. She’s right there. She’s fine.
I knew it wasn’t Brianna. I want to be clear about that too. Some part of me knew the whole time. But knowing a thing and being able to act on what you know are two different mechanisms, and mine came apart for a little while on a Saturday afternoon in a park.
Piper turns nine in April.
Brianna would have been eleven in March.
I keep doing the math on that, for some reason. Like the numbers mean something.
Where I Am Now
Dale held me for a long time when I told him about the message from Gwen. He didn’t say much. He’s not a big talker, Dale. He just held on.
Marcus doesn’t know any of this. He’s twelve and he carries enough already. He still sets a place for Brianna at Thanksgiving, not because we told him to, just because one year he did it and we didn’t say anything and so he’s done it every year since. He’s a good kid. He’d probably understand more than I give him credit for.
I think about Gwen sometimes. I think about her going home and hugging Piper extra. I think about Piper asking again why the lady at the park was sad, and what Gwen said, or whether she said anything at all.
I’m not okay. I’ve said that already. But I’m still here, still going to therapy every other Thursday, still sleeping with the cardigan on the pillow.
Still doing the math.
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If this one stayed with you, pass it to someone who might need it. You probably know who.
For more emotional stories that will leave you breathless, check out what happened when my grandfather left me everything and his kids called it manipulation or when I showed up to a will reading I wasn’t invited to. You might also appreciate the story of my son’s citizenship award and the PTA president who said he didn’t have a mom.
