Is Helplessness the Precursor to Surrender? By Ivana Ayala-Esslinger

In September, something happened that made me fear I could lose my son. There are moments in a mother’s life that open a door you pray you’ll never have to walk through — a door into a reality where love and loss sit side by side, breathing the same air.

Even though he survived — he is safe, alive, here — my heart walked through that doorway. And once it opened, something in me began to unravel.

I found myself asking a question I never wanted to face:

Does the possibility of losing my child become a portal into a deeper knowing —a knowing that I am not in control?

Because when the heart enters the terrain of what could have been, it sinks with a gravity that words can barely hold. It pulls you into the place no one wants to go, and some of us are forced to visit. For everything we love, we lose. But not everyone will know the loss of a child, or even the brush of that terror. It is its own category of grief — the grief of the almost.

The grief of the imagination.

The Duality of What Is and What Could Have Been

What makes love worth the risk of this kind of pain?

Perhaps it is the polarity — the sharp contrast between the joy of what is and the devastation of what almost wasn’t. The deep ache of imagining the loss of their smile, their breath, their future… alongside the overwhelming gratitude that those things remain intact.

For the parents I have sat with in grief, there is often this unbearable tug-of-war:“I could have done more” intertwined with “There was nothing more I could do.”Both voices true. Both voices merciless.

The mind debates.

The heart breaks.

The body remembers.

Yesterday, I joined them in that liminal space — not as a clinician, but as a mother.

The Moment Helplessness Arrives

As I sat with the realization that my son could have died, a wave of emotions crashed through me — humility, sadness, fear, anger, gratitude. All at once. All equally valid.

I felt helpless in the purest sense. The kind of helplessness that strips you of every illusion of control.

There was no one to blame.

No fault to find.

Only the truth:

Death arrives when it arrives.

Love ends when it ends.

We are powerless over the timing of either.

And when that truth sinks in, helplessness is not just an emotion —it becomes a threshold.

A white flag.

A release.

A quiet surrender to the reality that no amount of effort or vigilance can protect us from the inevitable.

The Heartbreak Before the Miracle

When helplessness cracked me open, grief poured out.

A flood.

A tsunami.

Tears soaking the earth beneath me as I lay prostrate, stripped of fight, stripped of illusion, stripped of the belief that I could prevent the unpreventable.

All that remained was truth:

I love him so much.

This hurts so much.

And I am so grateful he is still here.

That is surrender.

Not the peaceful kind we imagine.

Not the spiritual ascension kind.

But the kind that breaks you first.

Allowing Grief Its Ceremony

I knew I had to honor what had moved through me, or risk pushing it into the shadows — where grief becomes depression, where fear becomes shutdown, where pain turns inward and grows sharp edges.

So I let myself cry.

All day.

I let people hold me. I let them share their fears too.

I let myself be seen in a way mothers often aren’t allowed to be.

And I decided I will hold a grief ceremony for myself — because this initiation deserves space. It deserves breath and expression and ritual. Not for closure, but for capacity. For expansion. For truth.

Because ignoring grief is what dims us.

Honoring grief is what frees us.

The Moment After

Later, I hugged my son’s friend and thanked him. Then I held my son and sobbed into him — telling him I loved him, that he didn’t do anything wrong, that I was grateful he was okay.

He pulled back, looked at me, and said:

“Mom, I’m not gonna go out that easy.”

I wiped tears, breathed, and muttered,

“Brat.”

And somehow, that small moment — that tiny flicker of humor — felt like the first inhale after drowning.

So Is Helplessness the Precursor to Surrender?

I think it might be.

Helplessness breaks the illusion of control. Surrender appears in the space that becomes available afterward.

Surrender is not giving up —

it is giving in to reality.

To love.

To vulnerability.

To gratitude.

To the truth that everything we love is temporary, which is exactly what makes it sacred.

Helplessness opens the gate.

Surrender walks us through it.

And on the other side of that surrender is not peace, exactly —but a deeper capacity to hold ourselves

and to hold each other

in all the complexity of being alive.

In solidarity in this life,

Ivana

Integrative Mental Health Counselor and Akashic Channel

Lilypad Counseling and Wellness Center, Stuart, Fl and Virtual across Florida

Ivana works with Professionals, Therapists, Healers, Givers and Service Workers who are navigating loss, hopelessness, and panic, as well as those seeking integration after life-altering experiences. For those feeling a lack of satisfaction in life, I help them find clarity, relief, and peace by fostering a space of empathy, safety, and hope. I love offering tools, intuitive guidance, and empathic leadership, all while incorporating levity, deep exploration and empowerment into our work together.

If this resonates, you feel this deeply or simply are curious to learn more about me and my practice. Click here!