My Husband Left Me for My Sister and I Lost Our Baby — At Their Wedding, My Nine-Year-Old Found Her Voice
I watched both things at once.
And I will tell it that way, because that is how it was.
I have learned, since, that there is a name for what happened to my daughter, and that it is far more common than I ever knew, and that knowing the name helped me understand what I was seeing and what I had to undo.
The name is parentification.
It is what happens when a child, usually because the adults around them have become unavailable — through crisis, or grief, or their own failures — takes on the emotional or practical responsibilities that belong to the grown-ups.