I sensed that something was deeply wrong long before there was a word for it, because motherhood trains you to recognize pain even when it goes unspoken. My sixteen-year-old daughter, Elena, had been crying out in silence for weeks. Her body seemed to fold inward more each day, shrinking in ways that felt instinctively alarming—this wasn’t the kind of danger that announces itself loudly, but the kind that quietly eats away until the child you love no longer resembles herself.It started in small, almost dismissible ways, as it often does. Nausea that came and went before settling in for good. A hand pressed firmly against her lower stomach, as though she were trying to physically restrain something inside her. Headaches that drove her into dark rooms.

A level of exhaustion so extreme it drained the color from her face, replacing the once-lively teenager who used to sing in the kitchen and rush out the door late for school with a subdued, retreating version of my daughter. She stopped meeting my eyes. She wore oversized sweaters even when the house was warm, as if hiding had become instinct.He insisted Elena was mimicking symptoms she’d seen online, that teenagers exaggerated for attention, that girls her age were naturally dramatic. Each time he spoke, I felt torn between the man I had married and the mother I had become. His voice was firm and commanding, but the truth was written clearly in Elena’s body, impossible to ignore once I allowed myself to truly see it.