Years ago, when I was working as an occupational therapist in the oncology and palliative care unit, I met a man not much older than I am now. He had young children, like mine. He had an aggressive form of brain cancer, and his prognosis was short.

I remember the day he was readmitted with a severe infection. His wife sat beside him, weary but determined, holding onto the last threads of control in a situation that was slipping through her fingers. She looked at me and asked, Why?

She had done everything right. She had been careful with hygiene, taken every precaution, followed every medical recommendation. Yet here they were. She wanted to know how this had happened, how her effort and vigilance hadn’t been enough to stop it.

I was young then, and I told her, Sometimes we can only do our best, and the rest is out of our hands.

She didn’t miss a beat before replying, How can that be enough?

Her words have stayed with me for years. At the time, I felt like my response was callous, inadequate. She wasn’t just asking about infection control—she was asking about the cruel randomness of life, about the unbearable reality that love, effort, and sacrifice don’t always change the outcome. And when the stakes are that high, when a life is on the line, how can doing our best ever feel like enough?

Now, as a parent, I hear that question in a different way. I try my best every day, and yet there are moments when I wonder if it’s enough. The weight of raising children, making the right choices, protecting them from struggle—it’s immense. And still, no matter how hard I try, I can’t control everything.

If I could go back to that moment, I don’t think I would say anything at all. Some pain can’t be eased with words. Some moments just need presence. Maybe that’s what I carry forward now—the understanding that in life, in parenting, in loss, there are no perfect words, no guarantees, no way to fix everything. All we can do is show up, hold space, and let that be enough, even when it doesn’t feel like it is.

If you are carrying this kind of exhaustion, When You Feel Like You’re Drifting — The Quiet Sadness of Parenthood Nobody Talks About speaks to what lives underneath it. The dying mother whose story sits behind this one is in A Legacy Left Unwritten. And the conversations these palliative care lessons return for me now in parenting are in When Your Neurodivergent Child Asks About Death.