My meditation on loss takes me back to the other woman in Solomon’s court.

She is eternally remembered for saying,

“Neither I nor you shall have him. Cut him in two.”

I find myself wondering about the other woman.

We know about the true mother’s love, the wisdom exhibited by Solomon, and the child whose life was spared. But we rarely hear about the other woman.

She, too, had been a mother.

She, too, had experienced the joy of new life, the excitement of holding a newborn, and the fragile hopes that come with a birth. And she had experienced a profound loss.

As she stood before Solomon, I wonder what grief had done to her heart.

Loss has a way of changing the landscape of the heart. It brings to the fore emotions we didn’t know we had. First comes sorrow, but it is often accompanied by anger. Then resentment follows. So do questions that are unanswerable.

Why did her child live and not mine?

Why should she know laughter while I drown in silence?

Why should she still enjoy what I was deprived of?

At first, she may have wanted to undo her loss. She may have thought that possessing the living infant would quiet her pain. But some precious things cannot be replaced. What is lost remains lost.

And when she understood that, perhaps a different temptation emerged.

If I cannot have a child, neither should she.

If my arms are empty, let hers be empty too.

The sword would not return what she had lost. It would only create a companion for her suffering.

This may be one of grief’s quiet dangers.

Pain longs to be understood. But when it is not addressed for too long, it seeks a strange validation. Another’s happiness can feel offensive. Another’s blessing can become a reminder of our loss. We start to believe shared suffering would be just.

The child lived because one woman chose love over possession.

But the story lingers because of the other woman.

She reminds us that loss must be handled with care.

Grief must be named. Grief must be mourned. Grief must be allowed to manifest and be expressed. Otherwise, it can harden into jealousy, resentment, or anger. It can delude us into believing that another person’s happiness diminishes our own, or that another person’s suffering somehow returns what we have lost.

I have come to believe that proper grieving asks something difficult of us.

It asks us to bless what we can no longer possess.

To witness another’s joy without measuring it against our sorrow.

To accept that another person’s abundance does not deepen our loss, nor does their suffering heal our pain.

And so I regard the other woman, not with judgment, but with compassion.

For in her, I see a temptation known to every wounded heart: the desire to make others carry what we cannot bear alone.

The child lived.

But the story remains, asking each of us a quiet question:

What will become of our grief?