Bold Living

The day after my daughter died, I met a close friend at the cemetery where I had buried my mother's ashes two years earlier. My friend and I were meeting to look for my mother’s grave together, as I had not been back since that burial and was vague on exactly where in the cemetery my mother's stone was. I had told my daughter the night before she died that I would put her ashes in next to her grandmother. She liked that.

When I met Sarah that day I said to her, "This is not going to ruin me." I think I knew I would go through a challenging grieving process. I didn't know just what that would entail, but I did know it would be long and hard. I also knew myself well enough to know that I would not succumb to ruin, that my grief would not take over the rest of my life, that my resilience and boldness would keep me afloat and grow over time.

And that is what has happened. It's been a long road through sadness and loss, telling our story in a memoir and getting that published, starting this newsletter, keeping at living, prioritizing my friendships, taking chances on adding new people to my life, and generally boldly moving forward. I think that feeling determined to not become a mother ruined by her child's death helped me immensely in not becoming that. I think we get to choose who we are. I chose resilience and boldness. I am not trying to make this path of moving beyond the loss of an adult child sound easy. It has never been easy for me. And yet, here I am, boldly writing this newsletter and boldly living my life, despite a huge loss that has, as I expected, become more manageable over time.