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Happy Sunday 👋🏾,

This one has taken me a year to write.

On 10th July 2025, we lost our son Zachariah at 31 weeks.

Some of you will already know.

Many of you won’t.

I just haven’t been in the right place to write about it.

I’m not sure you’re ever ready to write something like this.

But a year on, I’m in a better place.

And it felt right to finally share it with you.

I won’t dress it up.

It’s been the hardest 12 months of our lives.

Grieving someone you never got to meet

Nobody prepares you for this kind of grief.

When you lose someone you knew, you grieve the memories.

The conversations.

The moments you shared.

When you lose a child at 31 weeks, you grieve what could have been.

Zeek and Zach arguing over the same toy.

The noise of the two of them tearing around the house.

Watching Zeek look out for his little brother.

The two of them laughing at things only brothers find funny.

Just yesterday it caught me again.

I was thinking about the Summer ahead, the family days out, the events we’ll be at.

And the thought landed before I could stop it.

It could have been Zeek and Zach.

And it’s not just the big days.

We went to visit Zachariah this week, and I expected that to be heavy.

What I didn’t expect was everything in between.

I’ve lost count of the quiet moments this year.

Watching something on TV and feeling it hit me out of nowhere.

That’s how this grief works.

It doesn’t announce itself.

It doesn’t wait for the anniversary.

It hits you out of the blue.

And when it does, you just have to let it sit with you for a while.

Sheriden

I won’t say too much here.

Her side of this is her story to tell, not mine.

What I will say is that I’ve watched my wife carry something this year that no parent should have to carry.

And my job has been simple.

Be there.

Hold her hand when there are no words.

Some days I got it right.

Some days I didn’t know what right looked like.

We’ve carried it differently.

But we’ve carried it together.

And honestly, we’re closer than ever.

What a year of grief has taught me

I’d love to tell you I’ve made sense of it.

I haven’t.

I’m not sure you ever do.

From the outside, this year probably looked like a good one.

The business grew.

We ran our biggest event yet in Lagos.

Doors kept opening.

But nobody claps for the quiet things.

Getting out of bed.

Delivering training with a heavy heart.

Some of my proudest moments this year are ones nobody saw.

I’ll be honest about something else too.

For parts of this year, I retreated into myself.

I went quiet.

I kept working, kept showing up, but I was trying to work it all out on my own.

I’m still learning that carrying something doesn’t mean carrying it alone.

Because losing Zach has given me a perspective I never asked for.

I hold Zeek a little longer now.

I protect my evenings and my Saturdays with my family in a way I didn’t before.

When I say time with the people you love is the only thing you can’t get back, I’m not repeating something I read.

No book taught me that.

Zach did.

Before I close, I want to say thank you.

To everyone who has supported us this past year.

The messages, the check-ins, the quiet acts of kindness.

You carried us more than you know.

A year ago, we said goodbye to a son we never got to meet.

But he was here.

He is ours.

And we will carry him with us, always.

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