The following story was submitted by a mother who is active in NOMA’s Family Support Group. Her family is living through one of the hardest experiences a parent can face — loving a child whose whereabouts are unknown. We share her words here because we know she is not alone.

Stories of Hope are shared with permission. This is Diana’s story.

It’s a kind of pain that never settles.

There’s no closure, no clear ending—just a constant, aching question mark. Every morning I wake up with the same quiet hope maybe today is the day… and most nights I fall asleep with the same unanswered silence. It feels like grief, but I’m not allowed to fully grieve. My love is stretched across distance and uncertainty.

I live in two worlds at once. In one, I hold onto who my youngest son is—the way he laughs, the little things about him, the boy he once was. In the other, I face who addiction has made him, and where it may have taken him. Those two versions don’t fit together, and carrying both is exhausting.

Guilt finds me whether I invite it or not:

Did I miss something? Could I have done more?

Even when I know how powerful addiction is, my heart still searches for somewhere to place the blame.

The fear never really turns off. Every unknown number, every late-night call, every headline—it all feels like it could be him. And at the same time, there’s the quieter, more haunting fear: what if nothing ever comes? What if he dies?

And beneath all of it, depression comes in waves…not loud, but heavy. I feel it in the kind of exhaustion sleep doesn’t fix. In days that feel muted, where even simple things take effort. The world keeps moving, but inside me, everything feels slowed down, dimmed. I smile when I’m supposed to. I show up when I have to. But there’s a constant weight I carry that never fully lifts.

Joy feels complicated now. Sometimes when I laugh, it’s followed by guilt. Rest feels undeserved. And hope…well hope is fragile. It’s something I have to choose, over and over again.

And yet… my love for him refuses to loosen its grip.

It shows up in the small things—checking places he used to go, searching faces in crowds, holding onto memories like they’re lifelines. It lives in the prayers I whisper into the dark, in the way I still talk about him, in the space I keep for him that never truly feels empty.

This isn’t just anguish. It’s endurance.

Loving my son through addiction and absence has required a strength I didn’t know I had. It’s quiet, unseen, and constant—the willingness to keep loving him, even when I don’t know where that love will land.

And even in the heaviness, even in the pull of depression, my love for him remains—still reaching, still waiting, still refusing to give up.

But thanks to Not One More Alabama (NOMA), I understand something I resisted for a long time: I have to fight for my own healing, too.

Not instead of loving him—but alongside it.

My recovery from this matters. Seeking help, allowing moments of light, choosing to care for myself—these are not acts of betrayal. They are acts of survival. Because if he ever finds his way back, I want to be here… not just existing, but able to truly see him, hold him, and live again.

So I take small steps. I breathe. I reach for support. I am active in our NOMA family support group, and I choose, little by little, not to disappear inside this pain. NOMA has literally saved my life, and my NOMA support group has become my family.

Loving my son means I keep a place for him in my life.

But loving myself means I keep a place for me, too.