The House Filled with Music

Some houses become memories long before we ever leave them.

When I think about my childhood, I don't remember square footage or furniture. I remember music.

It seemed there was always a melody drifting through our home. Sometimes it came from the stereo while my parents cleaned the kitchen together. Other times my sisters and I danced through the living room without much rhythm, inventing games that only made perfect sense to us. Music filled the quiet spaces between ordinary moments and somehow made them feel sacred.

Our house wasn't perfect, though I believed it was.

Every evening we gathered around the dinner table, bowed our heads, and thanked God for the meal before us. The prayers were simple, the kind spoken by people who trusted they were heard. My parents laughed easily. My sisters and I argued over little things only to forget them moments later. There was comfort in the predictability of those days.

The Domagalski Family circa 2007

I was the oldest of three girls, a role I embraced with more enthusiasm than responsibility. I loved helping my younger sisters, whether that meant inventing games, settling disagreements, or simply making sure they felt included. Being the oldest made me feel important, though I didn't yet understand that the same instinct to protect would one day become a burden I was never meant to carry.

As children, we assume the world we know is the world that will always be.

No one tells you that ordinary days are extraordinary until they disappear.

Looking back now, I realize those early years gave me my first understanding of God—not through theology or sermons, but through the atmosphere of our home. Love felt dependable. Home felt secure. Faith wasn't something we performed; it was simply woven into everyday life. God existed as naturally as morning sunlight spilling through the windows or the sound of my sisters laughing down the hallway.

It never occurred to me that any of it could end.

Then, when I was seven years old, my parents divorced.

Deborah, Lydia, and Esther in the House Filled with Music

Children rarely understand the reasons adults make the decisions they do. Divorce is spoken about in legal terms by grown-ups, but children experience it as the sudden disappearance of the world they thought they could depend on.

One day there is one home.

Then there are two.

One set of traditions becomes divided into separate holidays, separate bedrooms, separate routines. The familiar rhythm of everyday life begins to splinter into something unfamiliar.

I couldn't explain what had happened, but I knew something precious had been lost.

The hardest part wasn't simply that my parents no longer lived together. It was realizing that the people I trusted most could not stop painful things from happening.

As an adult, I understand that marriages are infinitely more complicated than a child could ever comprehend. Relationships carry histories, struggles, disappointments, and decisions invisible to young eyes.

But children don't think like adults.

When something breaks, they search for a reason.

And more often than not, they find themselves.

Without anyone telling me to, I quietly began believing that perhaps I had done something wrong.

Maybe I hadn't been grateful enough.

Maybe I hadn't listened well enough.

Maybe if I had been a better daughter, everyone would still be happy.

It sounds irrational now, but children's hearts are remarkably creative when trying to explain pain. Believing that I had somehow caused my family's brokenness felt strangely safer than accepting that life could simply fall apart despite everyone's best intentions. If the problem was me, perhaps I could fix it. If it wasn't, then the world suddenly felt frighteningly unpredictable.

That belief settled into me almost unnoticed.

It became the quiet narrator behind many of my thoughts.

I didn't yet call it shame.

I simply thought it was the truth.

The role of oldest sister also began to change.

The three sisters

Before the divorce, caring for my sisters had been joyful. Afterward, it felt like a responsibility. I watched my mother grieve while trying to remain strong for us. I watched my father navigate his own profound life changes. Without realizing it, I stepped into the space between everyone else's pain, hoping somehow to hold the family together with the small hands of a little girl.

Of course, no child can do that.

But children often try.

Years later, psychologists would give language to what I experienced. They call it parentification—when children begin carrying emotional responsibilities that belong to adults. At seven years old, I knew nothing about psychology. I only knew that everyone around me seemed to be hurting, and I desperately wanted to make things better.

What I couldn't see then was that every attempt to rescue someone else came at the cost of forgetting myself.

The little girl who once danced through the house to the sound of music gradually became a young girl measuring her worth by how well she could keep everyone else from hurting.

That is one of shame's quietest disguises.

It convinces us that love must be earned.

For years, I believed that if I worked hard enough, behaved well enough, achieved enough, or cared deeply enough for everyone around me, I could somehow become worthy of the security I had lost.

I didn't know it then, but that belief would shape nearly every major decision I made over the next decade.

The search for identity that would eventually lead me through rebellion, heartbreak, mental illness, and ultimately restoration did not begin in college.

It began in a little house filled with music.

Because sometimes the stories that transform us don't begin with dramatic moments.

Sometimes they begin with the quiet loss of something we never imagined could disappear.

And sometimes, without realizing it, we spend years trying to find our way back home.