Bring Jacob Le Home: Help a Mother Reunite with Her Toddler

My son and I were separated by force. For 546 days now, I have lived without him. Jacob was only three years old. I was told that if I did not comply, law enforcement would intervene. Faced with that threat, I complied against every maternal instinct. Since then, I have not seen him.

What followed was not silence, but a disorienting noise: the sound of a world that moved on while mine unraveled. Courtrooms issued rulings, but they did not bear witness to the aching absence of a child’s voice at bedtime, the tiny clothes left folded in drawers, the toys collecting dust. The law can issue judgments, but it cannot grasp the true measure of a child-shaped absence. It does not acknowledge what it means to obey an order that violates your sense of safety, or the pain that obedience can produce.

In my case, the facts once accepted by the court have not withstood scrutiny. Assertions presented as truth have proven to be constructed performances rather than realities. What was delivered in the name of justice now resembles only its appearance. The institutions entrusted with protecting families have revealed a priority: adherence to their own internal policies over a duty of care to children.

Jacob was taken, sanctioned by a court order, without ever being meaningfully seen, heard, or understood. A disappearance made legal through process, but no less devastating in its effect.

Grief is not just an emotion; it is a physical presence. My arms carry the imprint of his small body, and my hands reach out, driven by habit and longing for his chubby hands. The void he left is felt in every fibre of my being. I have learned that time alone does not heal, what is needed is acknowledgment. But, recognition is seldom offered by the systems.

Ontario’s family courts speak of children as abstract principles, yet seldom listen to them directly. They demand neutrality, while often punishing emotion. And when their decisions fracture families, they retreat behind procedure, as if harm disappears the moment it's been authorized.

This, too, is part of the cruelty: a court can sever mother and child and then vanish from the story. It is not held accountable for what happens next. When those same institutions later hope their messages "find me well,” I wonder if they understand what they took.

I do not write this for sympathy. I write it as testimony. To reclaim Jacob. To resist erasure. 546 days is not a file number. It is a life. A ritual of folding sheets no one sleeps in. A plate set for someone who won’t arrive. It is a mother learning to live while carrying absence alone.

Some griefs defy language. But they demand to be spoken. Because what happened to my son is not an isolated misfortune. It reveals systemic failures, entrenched blind spots, and a disturbing readiness to treat dissent as danger.

Let us call it what it is.

Do not say the system failed. Say the system chose.

Do not say the child was lost. Say the child was taken and silence helped.

I now understand grief as a slow architecture. Every wall, every room, shaped around the absence of Jacob. And somewhere inside that quiet construction, I am still building for the day the door opens, and he walks through it. For the moment his eyes meet mine again.

Until then, I will keep speaking. Because grief, though personal, is also political. It reveals what our systems overlook, and whom they silence. Children like Jacob deserve more than paperwork and policies. They deserve care. They deserve presence. They deserve to be seen. They deserve our government to help bring them home.

Help me bring Jacob home.