Am I a terrible person for following a stranger through a park because she looked like my dead daughter?
I (38F) lost my daughter Mia three years ago. She was seven. I won’t go into the details because I can’t do that right now, but it was sudden and it was wrong and there is not a single hour of any day where I don’t feel the hole where she used to be.
I’ve been in grief counseling. I have a therapist, Dr. Renata Howell, who I see every Tuesday. I am not a person who is falling apart. I am a person who is HOLDING IT TOGETHER, barely, every single day, and I know the difference between a healthy moment and an unhealthy one.
Or I thought I did.
Last Saturday I was at Creekside Park, which is where Mia and I used to go on weekends. My therapist actually encouraged me to start going back. Said it was part of reconnecting with the good memories instead of just the absence.
I was sitting on the bench by the duck pond, and I saw a little girl in a yellow raincoat feeding the ducks with her mom.
My stomach lurched.
The girl had Mia’s exact hair. Dark, wavy, a little wild. She was the same height Mia was, the same build. She kept laughing at the ducks in this high, delighted way and I – I couldn’t breathe.
The mom started walking toward the far end of the pond, and I got up.
I told myself I just wanted to be near her. Near THAT. Near whatever that feeling was.
I followed them for maybe ten minutes. Staying back, staying quiet. Just watching the little girl chase the ducks and talk to her mom about which one was the fattest.
And then the mom turned around and looked directly at me.
I stopped. My face went hot.
She said, “Can I help you?”
Her voice was flat and careful in the way voices get when someone is scared but trying not to show it.
I said, “I’m sorry – she just looks so much like my daughter.”
The woman pulled the little girl close. “Your daughter?”
“She passed away,” I said. “Three years ago. I’m sorry, I know this is – I know how this looks.”
The woman stared at me for a long moment.
Then she said something, and the little girl looked up at me with these big brown eyes that were NOTHING like Mia’s eyes, and I realized I’d been seeing something that wasn’t there, and my friends say I need to forgive myself but my therapist – My therapist called me after the woman filed a complaint with the park.
I didn’t know she’d gotten my name from the parking lot camera until Dr. Howell said, “Diane, I need you to be honest with me about what happened Saturday, because there’s something you need to see.”
She sent me a link. And when I opened it –
What the Camera Saw
It was the park’s Facebook page.
Not a police report. Not a news article. The community Facebook page for Creekside Park, which has maybe four hundred members, mostly people who post about off-leash dogs and whether the splash pad is open yet.
The woman had posted a photo. Taken from her phone, shaky, clearly zoomed in. It was me. Standing maybe thirty feet behind her and the little girl. Staring.
The caption said: This woman followed my daughter and me for nearly fifteen minutes at Creekside Park this morning. She approached us and made a disturbing comment. If anyone recognizes her, please contact the park office or call the non-emergency police line. Our kids deserve to be safe.
Four hundred members.
Two hundred and sixty-seven shares by the time Dr. Howell sent it to me.
I sat on my kitchen floor and read the comments. I know I shouldn’t have. I read every single one anyway, which is a thing I do, which Dr. Howell has told me not to do, which I did anyway because I am a person who picks at things.
Predator behavior.
So disturbing. Glad you got away.
This is why I don’t let my kids play outside alone anymore.
She looks unhinged.
I looked at the photo again. At myself. Standing there in my green jacket, the one Mia used to call my “frog coat” because she was seven and everything was funnier when you were seven. My hands were at my sides. My face was – I don’t know what my face was doing. Something private and terrible that a stranger had now photographed and posted on the internet.
I called Dr. Howell back. She picked up on the second ring.
“I’m not a predator,” I said.
“I know that.”
“She thinks I’m a predator.”
“She thinks a stranger followed her child for fifteen minutes,” Dr. Howell said. “From where she was standing, Diane, she wasn’t wrong to be scared.”
The Part I Keep Turning Over
Here’s the thing. Here’s the thing I can’t get past.
The little girl’s eyes were brown. Mia’s eyes were gray. Not even a similar gray. A specific, unusual gray that her pediatrician once called “stormy,” which I wrote down in a journal because I was that kind of mother, the kind who wrote things down.
I knew, on some level, that this wasn’t Mia. I’m not delusional. I’m not psychotic. I have never in three years confused another child for my actual daughter.
But grief does something to the brain that I don’t have good words for. It’s not confusion exactly. It’s more like… the shape of her. The shape of who she was fits inside certain things and when I see one of those things my whole body responds before my brain can catch up.
The yellow raincoat. Mia had one. Hers was a size 4T with a duck on the pocket, bought from a Target in October two years before she died. I gave it to Goodwill fourteen months ago because Dr. Howell said I was ready and I was wrong, I was not ready.
So when I saw that yellow coat, I was already gone. Already somewhere else.
And I followed that somewhere else through a park for ten minutes while a real woman with a real child got more and more frightened and I didn’t even notice.
That’s the part. That’s the part I keep turning over.
What I Did Next
I wrote a response on the Facebook post.
Dr. Howell told me not to. My friend Carol, who has known me since before Mia was born, told me not to. My sister Linda called from Tucson and said “Diane, for the love of God, do not engage with that post.”
I engaged with the post.
I wrote: I’m the woman in this photo. I owe you an apology. I lost my daughter three years ago, and your little girl reminded me of her. That is not an excuse for what I did. You had every right to be frightened and every right to report it. I’m sorry I scared you. I’m sorry I scared her. I am getting help and I will do better.
I hit post. Then I sat on my kitchen floor again and waited.
She responded four hours later.
Not publicly. She sent me a private message. Her name, I saw from her profile, was Trish. She had a border collie named something I couldn’t read from the thumbnail, and her cover photo was a birthday cake.
She wrote: I read your post. I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry about your daughter. I can’t imagine. What you did still scared the hell out of me and I want you to know that. But I also showed your comment to my husband and we’re not going to push this further with the park. Take care of yourself.
I read that message six times.
Take care of yourself.
What Dr. Howell Actually Said
She didn’t say “this is a setback.” She didn’t say “we need to rethink your treatment plan” or “maybe Creekside Park isn’t the right place yet.”
She said, “Tell me about the coat.”
So I did. I told her about the Target in October and the duck on the pocket and the Goodwill bag I’d cried into for forty minutes before I could leave the house. I told her that I’d donated it because she said I was ready and I’d believed her because I wanted to be ready, because being ready felt like something I could give Mia, even though Mia was gone and couldn’t receive anything anymore.
Dr. Howell was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “I think we moved too fast on the coat.”
That’s it. That’s all she said about it. No analysis, no reframe. Just: we moved too fast.
I cried for about twenty minutes. She stayed on the phone.
When I stopped she said, “The park is still okay. The park is still part of healing. But next time you go, I want you to call me from the parking lot first.”
I said, “What if there isn’t a next time? What if I can’t go back?”
She said, “Then we figure that out. But I don’t think that’s true.”
What I Know and What I Don’t
I know I scared that woman. I know her daughter, who is not Mia and was never Mia, will probably not remember it. Kids that age don’t usually. She was busy deciding which duck was the fattest.
I know that photo is still up. Trish didn’t take it down. I don’t blame her for that either. The comments have slowed. Someone posted about a lost corgi and the algorithm moved on.
I know my friends think I should forgive myself and they mean it kindly and they are not wrong exactly, but forgiveness isn’t really the shape of what I need. What I need is harder to name. Something more like: permission to have been a person in tremendous pain who did something frightening without being either a monster or completely off the hook.
Both things. At once. That’s the work.
I don’t know if I’m a terrible person. I’ve been asking that question for three years about a hundred different things and I’m not sure the question is the right one anymore.
What I know is that Mia liked the fat ducks. She always rooted for the fat ones. She said they deserved the bread more because they had more duck to feed.
She was seven. She was so funny. She had gray eyes like a storm coming in off the water.
I’m going back to the park on Tuesday. After my session with Dr. Howell. I’m going to call her from the parking lot first, like she said.
And I’m going to bring bread for the fat ducks, because that’s what Mia would have done, and that’s mine to keep.
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If this stayed with you, pass it on to someone who needs to feel a little less alone today.
For more tales of unexpected revelations, you might find solace in “The Envelope Had My Name On It. Phyllis Never Told Me Why.” or perhaps relate to the public shaming in “She Called Me “Not a Contributing Member” Into a Microphone. In Front of Everyone.” And if you’re looking for another story of a trust betrayed, check out “My Husband Said He Was in Memphis. The Receipt Said Otherwise.”
