When a Story Reopens a Wound: Grief, Love, and the Unexpected Power of “Hamnet”
I didn’t expect to cry today.
I pressed play, thinking I was about to watch a beautifully told story—something thoughtful, maybe even emotional. But I wasn’t prepared for what it would pull out of me.
As I watched unfold, I found myself drawn into the bond between siblings the quiet, unspoken understanding, the instinct to protect. And then it happened. A child doing everything he could to save his sister… and in the end, dying in his mother’s arms.
That moment didn’t stay on the screen.
It reached into me and pulled up something I live with every day.
My son, Devonte “DJ” Pippen, was taken from me. Murdered. A reality no mother should ever have to speak, let alone survive. And in that scene, I didn’t just see a story I saw my pain. I felt it. All over again.
There’s something about storytelling especially the kind that carries the emotional depth often associated with creators like that doesn’t just entertain. It exposes. It opens doors we sometimes spend years trying to gently keep closed.
Today, that door swung wide open.
Grief is not linear. It doesn’t stay tucked away just because time has passed. It lives in moments like these unexpected, uninvited, but undeniably real. A film, a line, a look between characters… and suddenly you’re back in a place you know too well.
But here’s what I’m realizing, even through the tears:
That pain exists because love exists.
The reason that scene hurt so deeply is because I know what it means to love a child with everything in me. The reason I saw my son in that story is because he is still a part of me woven into my thoughts, my memories, my very being
Grief doesn’t mean we are broken
It means we remember
It means we loved fully, deeply, and without limits
And maybe, in some quiet way, these stories don’t just reopen wounds… maybe they remind us that the connection we have with those we’ve lost never truly disappears
Today, I cried
Not just because of a story
But because I am a mother who still loves her son.
