My name is Davan Hussey (Hanley), and this is the space behind The Empty Chair.

For as long as I can remember, I have lived with an absence I could never quite name, let alone fill. My mother’s presence in my life was fractured. She was missing during my high school years, absent from my graduation, and nowhere to be found on the day I married the love of my life.

Those empty chairs at my milestones were not just symbols. They were wounds. And they shaped me in ways I am still untangling.

When my father passed in 2020, the weight of absence grew heavier. I began to understand how much of my life had been marked not only by who was there, but by who wasn’t. The grief I carried was not just about death. It was about the living who chose not to show up.

This blog exists to break that silence.

I write for myself, to give language to the words I carried quietly for years. To write the letters that were never read. To release the pain that sat too long in the shadows. But I also write for you. For anyone who has looked at an empty chair at a graduation, a birthday, a wedding, or even an ordinary dinner table and felt the ache of being unseen, unloved, or abandoned.

The Empty Chair is about more than grief. It is about resilience. It is about how we keep showing up, even when others do not. It is about learning to love harder because we know what it feels like to be unloved. It is about finding family in unexpected places and building a future not defined by who left us behind, but by how we choose to move forward.

If my story resonates with you, I hope this space reminds you that you are not alone. That your empty chair does not define you. That healing is possible, even when the absence remains.

If you feel called, I invite you to share your own letter or story. Together, we can make space for truth, for release, and for the healing that comes when we finally say what we never could before. Your words matter, and your empty chair deserves to be seen.

This is my story.
This is our story.

Even when the chair is empty, our voices can still fill the silence.

A podcast will come next. For now, I am choosing to begin here, with the written word, allowing these stories the time and care they deserve before they are ever spoken aloud.