Where our pilgrimage truly began.

Into the mountain

Alexandra's sister Oana, and Bogdan took us into the Făgăraș Mountains. There was still snow in June. Fog moved across the peaks, hiding and revealing the landscape around us. Everything felt immense and strangely quiet.

To reach the other side, we had to pass through a dark tunnel. Inside, there was almost nothing to see, only darkness. And then, in the distance, light.

At that moment it felt impossible not to see our own lives in it. We could not go around the darkness. We could only enter it and keep moving.

Between emptiness and connection

High in the mountains, grief feels different. We were exhausted. Empty. Depleted.

And yet we also felt intensely connected to the mountain, to nature and to the family walking beside us. Nothing had been repaired. Eden was still gone.

But for a moment, the mountains were large enough to hold everything we were carrying. Sadness and beauty existed in the same place.

The house in the fog

There was a solitary house high in the mountains, surrounded by rock, snow and fog. Something about it stayed with us.

Small. Exposed. Almost swallowed by the landscape, but still standing. It felt like a reflection of our inner world at that time.

There was loneliness. There was uncertainty. But there was also something that remained.

Following the path

Looking down from the mountain, the road curved back and forth through the valley. There was no straight route. That became another image we carried home with us.

Grief had already taught us that there is no shortcut through it. There is no road that simply takes you back to who you were. You move forward. Sometimes upward. Sometimes backwards. But you keep going.

Returning to Brașov

The journey continued in Brașov. In October 2025 we had briefly lived there. It had been the last place we called home before returning to the Princess Máxima Center. By the end of November, Eden was going to kindergarten again.

Now we walk those same streets alone, with just the memory of him.

We returned to places that still contained an ordinary family life: routes we walked together, buildings we recognised, moments that once seemed completely normal.

It was painful precisely because everything was still there, except Eden. Except the life we knew.

Why we returned

Maybe it would have been easier to stay away from those places. But avoiding them would not make the grief disappear. Who knows, grief does not come with instructions.

We are learning that sometimes the only way through pain is to allow yourself to meet it. To return. To remember. To feel what is there. And then to continue walking.

The Făgăraș Mountains were not something we had planned as the beginning of a larger journey. But looking back, this is where **Steps with Eden** truly started.

Not with an answer. Not with healing. But with a step. And then another one.