There are wars no one sees — the ones fought in silence, between early morning daycare drop-offs and bedtime stories. War Cry was written from that battlefield. After divorce, strength stopped meaning “winning” and started meaning showing up — for my children, for myself, for the life that remained. This poem is for every mother rebuilding from scorched ground, learning that love can be both armor and offering, and that survival, in its quiet persistence, is its own kind of victory.
Today, someone told me,
“Don’t let him win.”
But if this is a war,
he already claimed his victory.
Not with courage or strategy—
but with silence, with absence.
He walked off the battlefield,
and somehow that was enough.
He got what he wanted.
Freedom. Distance.
No school emails. No hard talks.
No bedtime routines or broken hearts to tend.
No wreckage to clean up—
he left that to me.
So yes, maybe I’ll win this war.
Maybe I’ll build something beautiful
from the scorched ground he left behind.
Maybe I’ll raise these children
with trembling hands and relentless love,
and maybe they’ll grow tall and kind
because of me.
But still—
he got what he wanted.
And that knowledge
cuts deep,
because it means
he had the luxury to stop caring.
And I don’t.
Well-Stirred Reflection:
Maybe peace isn’t what comes after the war.
Maybe it’s what we build in the middle of it — between laundry piles and late-night tears, between choosing grace and choosing to try again. I’ve learned that healing doesn’t demand a truce; it asks for presence. And every day I stay, love, and rebuild — I’m not just surviving. I’m redefining what it means to win.
Well-Stirred & Wondering 
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