Surviving the Cold

Some memories don’t just come back softly—they hit with a chill you can still feel beneath your skin. That’s what happened today. I read a chapter about the winter my furnace went cold because the man I was married to blew out the pilot light… and for a moment, I felt it again.

Not just the temperature of that season, but the loneliness of it. The kind of loneliness that seeps into your bones long before the air does. I forgot how isolating that life really was.

Back then, the house was cold, but the silence was colder. I didn’t understand it at the time, but I was living beside someone who had already decided to withdraw from the marriage long before I ever knew the truth.

The man who should have been my partner, my protector, my safe place, was living a life that left me and my children shivering—physically, emotionally, spiritually.

It wasn’t just the heat that was turned off.
It was connection.
It was honesty.
It was care.
It was partnership.
And slowly, it became identity.

When I think back now, the tears don’t come from bitterness. They come from compassion—for the woman I was then. She carried the home alone. She carried the children alone. She carried the truth alone, even when she didn’t know what the truth was.

She wasn’t weak. She was surviving a life she didn’t have the words for yet.

And if you’ve ever lived through that kind of loneliness—the kind inside a marriage, inside a family, inside a life that looks normal from the outside—you know it’s a cold like no other.

But here’s what brings me to tears in the best way: I’m not living that life anymore. The loneliness is gone. The cold is gone. The heaviness of being the only one trying is gone.

Today, I wake up in warmth—not just temperature, but truth. I wake up beside a man who protects rather than withdraws. A man who shows up. A man who doesn’t ration comfort or weaponize basic needs. A man who holds my heart, my story, and my safety like they matter—because to him, they do.

And I think that’s why the memory hits differently now. Not because I’m still hurting… but because I’m not. There is a special kind of gratitude that rises when you remember the cold you survived while standing in a life full of warmth.

If I could speak to the woman I was back then, I would tell her:
You’re not high-maintenance.
You’re not dramatic.
You’re not hard to love.
You’re not a burden.
You’re not too much.

You were cold.
And you were alone.
And you were being lied to.

There’s a difference between weathering a hard season together and being left to suffer so someone else can fund their secrets. Back then, I didn’t know how to tell the difference.

But now? Now I live in a home where warmth isn’t questioned. Where truth isn’t hidden. Where love feels like safety instead of silence.

And here’s the part that undoes me: The pilot light didn’t just come back on in a furnace. It came back on inside of me. I didn’t just survive that winter—I came out of it carrying fire.

And that is the part of my story I will never stop giving thanks for.

Amber