Time heals, but doesn’t forget.

I’ve done a lot of good things since my mother’s passing, yet every time I stop and face the reality that she is no longer here, it catapults me back into the little child still yearning for her to come back. The reminders are relentless—in my dreams, when I wake, and when I try to fall asleep. There isn’t a single day that passes without thinking of her, missing her, and feeling the weight of her absence.

I had never lost someone close to me before. My first experience of loss was my mom, and it has been brutal. People say time heals, but the emptiness feels just as present today as it did the day she moved beyond this life.

Since losing her—and becoming a mother myself—I see the world differently. After experiencing that level of pain, I found myself trying to control everything I could, as if control could protect me from ever feeling that way again. I still meditate. I take care of my body. I am doing my best to be a healthy, present mom to my baby boy. And still, there is a space within me shaped by what will never be.

I’ve long known that even with my self-awareness—my strengths, my weaknesses, my constant desire to grow—I struggle with acceptance. I struggle to allow things to simply be. I want everything and everyone to be okay, to be whole, to be happy. And when they’re not, I find myself searching for reasons, analyzing until all that remains is a mind full of unanswered questions.

Because in acceptance, there is a loss of control. You allow. You stop trying to change what cannot be changed.

Grief has forced me to confront this. It is deeply personal, yet somehow shared—woven together by human experiences we can all recognize in one another. For me, it is always nearby. I can be in the middle of an ordinary moment, and suddenly I remember she’s gone. The tears come. My chest tightens. It begins again.

Sometimes it lasts five minutes. Other times, hours. And some days, I don’t try to move past it at all—I let myself sit in it, feel it fully, without rushing it away.

For now, this is what acceptance looks like for me.

A year after my mom got sick, my husband and I decided we would have a special dinner and treat this as our wedding day. Something in my heart told me to do this while my mom was still able as I did not know what was coming. In this photo, she was so happy. A few months later, she’d lose her ability to walk and be mobile. I will forever cherish having her alongside me and seeing how proud she was.

Always, always listen to your inner voice. It knows. We married on March 9th, 2024, with all the love we needed surrounding us. Thank you, Mom, for being there.