Breath suddenly feels miraculous. Emotions feel like prayers. Simplicity feels sacred.

Grief has shown me how to truly feel my life while living it, to let beauty reach me and to let the ache move all the way through.

But transformation is overwhelming. Sometimes I catch glimpses of myself and notice how strange, how “too much,” this version of me might have seemed to my old self. The truth is, I’m not the same person. And allowing myself to be transformed has been a choice.

The desire to numb, distract, and deflect still shows up more often than I’d like to admit. But then life finds its way back in. Through the laughter of my children, a view that takes my breath away, a perfectly timed synchronicity, and love that feels safe enough to receive. Through all the unexpected ways life keeps whispering, stay.

And it becomes almost impossible not to feel overwhelmed by gratitude.

Grateful for this life. Grateful for the ability to feel so deeply.

The choice to alchemize pain into something meaningful is one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever given myself. But I haven’t done it alone. It’s only been possible because of connection — because of the people who have held me, loved me, and walked tirelessly beside me. Because love, in all its forms, has been the thing that has carried me through.

Because of the way her life turned mine upside down… shifted everything I thought I knew, and showed me what it means to truly live. To choose love and connection. To hand them the keys to my heart, knowing firsthand they hold the power to shatter it — but also the ability to reveal just how beautiful this life can become.

I want to feel my life while I am inside it.

I want to let love mark me, let beauty undo me, and stay open enough to ache.

Because this is when grief stops feeling like an intruder and becomes a companion - a quiet lover of my tender parts.

Not untouchable,

Just human enough to feel it all.

She is not timid or uncertain.

She is steady and unwavering, impossible to outrun, certain as the tide.

Sometimes she crashes like waves, loud and relentless, spilling into every corner of your life.

And sometimes, you place her gently on a shelf — to survive, to breathe.

Grief understands. She waits.

Grief does not come to destroy you.

She comes to make you alive enough to feel it all.

She comes to initiate you, to widen your heart and remind you of the depths of your love until it can hold both ache and awe in the same breath.

She will show you everything you are ready to see. About love, about loss, about what truly matters. She reveals the places you’ve been holding too tightly, the parts you’ve been protecting, the spaces within you that are ready to open.

Because grief is a portal.

And on the other side the world sharpens, colors deepen, and even the smallest things begin to ache with meaning. What once felt ordinary becomes unbearably sacred.

She is the bridge between what was and what still is, between this world and the unseen one.

What is fleeting falls away, and what is eternal begins to hum beneath your skin.

She waits for your readiness.

And when you finally turn toward her, she does not pull you under — she takes your hand and shows you how to stand inside the vastness you once feared would break you.

But there is nothing that prepares you for the vulnerability of it all.

The first time you hold that tiny, innocent body on your chest, something shifts forever. Your heart no longer lives safely inside of you. It begins walking around outside your body, and protecting them becomes as instinctive as breathing.

At first, motherhood looks like ordinary protection. Cutting grapes into quarters and covering coffee table corners. Hovering near playground platforms, checking car seat buckles, and listening for coughs in the middle of the night. Love expressed through a thousand tiny acts of vigilance

For some mothers, it also becomes hospital rooms and monitors and long nights whispering prayers into the dark. Sometimes love asks you to learn just how fragile life is.

And then, for a small group of us, there comes a moment when physical protection is no longer something we can offer. A moment that brings us face to face with the devastating reality that our children were never truly ours to keep. They are entrusted to us, their souls belonging to something greater than our ability to hold on to them.

No matter our journey, grief eventually finds its way into the love story in some form.

Grief has taught me that love eventually asks for surrender. To release the illusion that we were ever fully in control of their story. To trust instead that our connection to them existed long before our bodies ever met, and will continue long after this life ends.

This is my first Mother’s Day without her physically here, and there are no words that can fully hold the ache of that. And yet, motherhood continues to move through me every day. I am still answering questions, wiping tears, making lunches, folding clothes, and trying to create safety inside a world that no longer feels entirely safe to me either.

I was made for this kind of love too — the kind even death cannot destroy.

And somewhere inside all of this, despite how differently motherhood unfolds for each of us, maybe this is what connects us. Whether our children are in our arms, growing beside us, waiting for us in hospital rooms, or loved from beyond the veil, motherhood asks all of us to live with our hearts exposed. To choose love despite knowing it could shatter us. To keep showing up, again and again, for the people who transformed us simply by existing.

Because to love someone this much — to willingly let your heart walk outside your body — is, I think, the most sacred and vulnerable thing we will ever know as mothers.

I used to think motherhood was about raising children. Now I think it is about allowing love to crack you wide open, while continuing to choose it anyway.

And what an honour it is.

But what if that isn’t what I want? What if the idea of it getting easier is actually what scares me?

Because grief is not just pain—it’s connection. It’s the thread that still ties me to her. It’s the place where she is still felt, still known, still here in the ways she can be.

I don’t want a life where she becomes a memory I visit from time to time. I want a life where she is woven into everything.

Where grief isn’t something I carry in isolation, or something I tuck away to appear “healed,” but something I make space for— in my joy, in my relationships, in the way I move through the world.

Not something waiting to disappear, but something invited to sit at the table.

Because loving her didn’t end. So why would grieving her?

Maybe the goal isn’t to make grief smaller. Maybe the goal is to make a world big enough to hold it. And to let it become part of how we live, not something we have to set aside as time passes.

Not moving on. But moving with.

You don’t know it yet, but your life is about to open you and break in ways you never imagined.

You will come to know death, not as something distant or abstract, but as something real. Something that changes the way you move through the world. There will come a kind of grief that doesn’t just visit, but moves in. And it will ask everything of you.

You will meet parts of yourself you’ve kept quiet for a long time. The soft, deeply feeling parts. The ones that notice everything, that feel it all. You won’t be able to silence them the way you used to, and slowly, you won’t want to.

You will start to see the world differently. There will be quiet moments where everything feels threaded together in a way you can’t quite explain. Love will feel bigger and more alive than it ever has.

And with it will come a heightened connection.

To people. To moments. To the world around you. The sun will feel brighter on your skin. The breeze will move through you instead of past you. Even the earth beneath your feet will feel alive, like something you’ve only just remembered how to notice.

It will be beautiful. But it will hurt, too.

Because you’ll also see how disconnected we’ve been. How much we numb and how much we miss. How little we slow down to really feel, to really love, to really be here. And holding both of those truths—the beauty and the breaking—will feel like too much some days.

But you’ll learn how to live there.

Not perfectly, and not all at once, but in moments and in breaths. In choosing, again and again, to open. And even in the pain—especially in the pain—you will find something real. Something that was always there, waiting for you to understand it.

You won’t be the same after this. And as much as you would give anything for that to be different… there is something undeniable in who you become.

I’m so sorry for what you’re about to walk through. And I’m so proud of you for staying.

It whispers, and often yells, the truth we spend most of our lives avoiding: that everything and everyone we love is temporary.

It strips away the stories we told ourselves to keep going. The places we stayed because they were familiar. The relationships we clung to because they once fit who we were. The versions of ourselves we thought we were meant to be.

And slowly, the ways we used to outrun our pain stop working.

When grief enters, it has a quiet but undeniable way of asking: Is this still true for you?

And often, the answer changes.

Things fall away. People. Paths. Identities. Because grief has a way of clearing space for what is real.

It makes us small enough to listen. Still enough to notice.

And what remains is rarely louder or grander.

Just truer.

Because grief, when we are willing to meet it, is a truth teller.

A routine surgery to remove a benign tumour triggered a sudden organ failure. Doctors told us we had hours left with her.

Instead, she waited seven weeks and received a rare multi-organ transplant. Against all odds, and completely outside of anyone’s control, she survived.

From the outside, her life eventually looked surprisingly normal. She ran and played and laughed like any other child. Most people who met her had no idea how fragile her body really was. Oftentimes, I even doubted it.

She was bright and hilarious, with a peaceful way of moving through the world.

But when your child has been given a timeline once, you never quite forget it.

Motherhood for me became something different. It was hospital rooms and medications and careful monitoring at times, but it was also birthday parties, hiking trips, and muddy boots. It was learning to hold two realities at the same time: a child who was beautifully alive and the quiet knowing that her life was unpredictable.

For years I lived with what I now understand to be pre-emptive grief.

The transplant forced something in me I had never practiced before: surrender.

Not the peaceful, poetic kind people talk about in yoga classes. The kind where life strips away everything, including the illusion that you are in control of how it unfolds.

You’re left with a decision: find purpose in the pain, or let it swallow you.

When you sit beside a hospital bed after being told your child may die, something inside you cracks open. Grief does that. It reveals everything, It demands honesty, and  it quietly rewrites the life you thought you thought you wanted.

And once that door opens, it never really closes again.

Years later, eight months ago, we were camping with family when she woke up sick in the night. Within hours, she was unresponsive. This time was different. There was no fight. At seven years old, she was suddenly gone. The extra years we were given with her on this earth were over.

Losing her broke me open in ways I never imagined possible.

But strangely, the surrender I learned all those years ago, the one the transplant forced on me, was still there.

Her life changed the way I love.

The way I see time.

The way I hold people.

The way I trust myself.

Grief didn’t just arrive when she died, it had been quietly shaping me for years. Her story is one of nuance and quiet power.

And now I carry both things with me: the ache of losing her and the extraordinary privilege of being her mother.

I have three.

Sometimes I say it.

Sometimes I don’t.

Not because I don’t want to talk about her — I always do. And not because it hurts too much — it always does. The instinct to leave her out comes from the way I’ve been conditioned to soften the edges before anyone else feels them.

It’s about the way conversations shift when death enters the room. The way eyes soften. The way people scramble for the right thing to say. The way a simple exchange suddenly feels heavy.

So sometimes I edit my life to keep things light.

But when I really sit with what I want, it’s never to erase her. I will forever be her mom, just in a different form. My motherhood did not shrink. It changed shape.

I wish grief could sit at the table without flipping it over.

I wish pain could be named without everyone holding their breath.

I wish death could exist in our ordinary exchanges.

The lump in my throat is the space between truth and comfort — between honoring her out loud and letting the room hold it with me.

Maybe I can simply say, “Three” and trust that grief can exist without swallowing us whole. That it isn’t just mine to carry and it can be shared. Even when the exchange is messy or clumsy, something honest is happening. It’s giving us a chance to slowly rewrite the script. And maybe that’s one of the ways her story keeps gifting the world.

Because she belongs in the count.

Always.

I went to pick up your sister from school, the bell ringing, backpacks swinging, and the joy of children spilling into afternoon.

And there you were. Running toward me like you’d never left.

You wrapped yourself around me as if this were expected, and I was the only one who didn’t know you were back.

I asked you what you were doing here, my voice shaking with a hope I was scared to name. You said you came back because I was calling you. Because a mother’s longing is loud.

I wondered if this was where you wanted to be. You smiled, the kind of smile that made me feel like the child. You said you could stay if I needed you to.

But you told me gently, that the ache I feel only belongs to breath and bones, to the beating hearts of those learning to straddle both worlds. You told me the love you feel now is one you can fully rest inside.

You weren’t far— just held differently now.

Part of me wanted to scoop you up, take you home, never let you leave my side.

But my heart understood that loving you now meant letting you go back.

So we spent the day together. No fear. No bargaining. Only bliss. And the quiet holiness of borrowed time.

And then you were gone again.

Not lost. Not taken. Just returned to the place that can hold you the way I no longer can.

And I woke up knowing that this is how we carry our love across the veil. And as I learn how to meet you there, in the stillness, in the listening, in the space love doesn’t die — you get to stay.

And I get to keep you, while learning how to let it be

I felt genuine anxiety about that. About not feeling the “right” things, not moving at the “right” pace. I was watching myself watch myself: “Am I handling this the way I’m supposed to?”

Six months into this grief journey, and something has shifted.

I’ve learned—slowly and imperfectly—that grief doesn’t need to be managed or mastered. It needs to be trusted. And in trusting it, I’ve learned to trust myself.

Grief has shown me that I know how to feel.

I can let waves move through me without panicking that they’ll destroy me. I can listen to my body, my intuition, my yes and my no. I don’t override myself the way I used to.

In some ways, I’ve come to love grief. Not because it’s pleasant—God knows it isn’t. But because it keeps me close: close to my daughter, close to my body, close to what’s real. It feels ancient and instinctual, like something humans have always known how to do, before we were taught to numb, bypass, or hurry through pain.

Grief has stripped everything down and brought clarity. It’s shown me that I don’t need to be afraid of my depth, my sensitivity, or my capacity to feel. That capacity isn’t weakness. It’s wisdom. And learning to trust it has quietly become one of the most solid forms of confidence I’ve ever known.

What surprises me most isn’t just the pain. It’s how close joy stays. A laugh that slips out. My own silliness, just there in the thick of it. How often it arrives right alongside sorrow, unannounced and real.

The more open I become, the more I notice how inseparable they are, symbiotic really. They aren’t asking me to choose. And when I try, both go numb. They’re just asking me to feel. And when I do, both show up. The same openness that allows sorrow to move through me is what lets joy reach me too.

And maybe my role is simply to let them be together. Let them sit shoulder to shoulder, like best friends, sometimes sticky and messy, not always easy, but meant to be together — leaning into each other, shaping a life that is tender, rich, and alive.

It called me into roles I never wanted, roles I didn’t choose, roles that came without warning and changed the very shape of me. Some initiations don’t ask for permission. They arrive. They break you open. And somehow, you keep breathing. The raw, holy kind that shows you exactly what matters and exactly what can no longer stay.

And now, as 2026 approaches, I can feel the shift. This year feels like transformation— but not the soft-focus, vision-board version. Real transformation has terms. It asks you to release anything that keeps you small: old stories, old patterns, old identities, that were never meant to be your forever. Because deep down, in that quiet place in your gut, you already know what can’t come with you. You already know what has to fall away for the life you want to finally take shape.

And when you let go—even gently, even imperfectly— you create room for the truest version of yourself to breathe again.

So here’s to 2026. A year of becoming braver, softer, and unmistakably aligned. A year of stepping into the skin that finally fits. 🐍

The sun rose. The rain poured. People moved through grocery store aisles in the same slow, familiar rhythm.

Traffic backed up at the same intersection, as if the most impossible things hadn’t just happened. Little bellies needed to be fed. Tiny shoes still needed to be tied. My body kept waking up each morning, even on the days I begged it not to. Everything around me kept moving—steady, unbothered, almost indifferent—while I stood inside a world that no longer made sense.

And I remember thinking, How dare life move on without her. How dare life expect me to move forward.

It felt cruel.

But lately I’m beginning to notice something I couldn’t in those early days: maybe the forward motion isn’t evidence of life’s coldness. Maybe it’s evidence of its tenderness.

Maybe life keeps going not to forget her, but to carry me.

Maybe morning comes each day not as an insult, but as a steadiness I can lean into — a gentle reminder that devastation and loss will not be the end of my story.

I used to feel the world was unkind for not stopping when she did. But now I am starting to see that if everything had frozen in time—if the coming days had refused to unfold—I would have stayed trapped in that moment forever.

I’m starting to feel that life’s movement—the changing seasons, the constant routines, the passage of time—might actually be the gentlest thing it could offer me.

Maybe the sun kept rising so that one day, I could rise with it.

From the very beginning, she lived in the inbetween– in the mystery. When we first discovered her tumour the doctors were stunned that she had gone 11 months with the size it was in her little body, let alone how she was smiling, content and thriving in so many ways.

After she received her multi-organ transplant, that space between what could be explained and what was simply miraculous only widened. She didn't fit into boxes–not in medicine, and not in life. She lived in the space between science and mystery, between fear and faith, between what made sense and what made her, just her. And she taught me to do the same. That’s where the both-and began for me.

She showed me how light and dark could sit beside each other, how joy and sorrow could share the same breath.

She was soft, so soft, and gentle with the world, with her sibling, with herself, and gentle with me. And at the same time she was fierce, and her body fought hard for life.

She was also humble and light-footed, usually quiet, often observing, rarely needing the spotlight. But she also loved to perform. Acting, dancing, singing, cracking us up with her subtle humour, she knew how to shine.

She even showed the both-and contradiction in the smallest and funniest ways–like how someone as light as a feather could out-eat most full grown adults. It was like her body knew how precious life was and refused to leave a single bite behind.

She didn’t resist change, through every transition our lives and family underwent she was generous with her hugs, and free with tears. “Its ok to be sad, mom.” She let me massage her, she let Kody sit with her. Even now in the heartbreak of her absence, she’s teaching me to accept that my emotions are simply part of my humanness.

I’m learning to hold the deepest grief I've ever known alongside profound gratitude. I’m mourning the future I imagined, all the shared meals and milestones and togetherness, and at the same time I’m so honoured that I got to be hers. My heart is shattered, and still whole. I’m in pain and at peace.

Lu belongs to God now, and she did all along. Her life was a collage of miracles that completely transformed the way I met, and experienced God. She collapsed the separateness I had struggled to reconcile, and brought God close enough to touch. I felt divinity in her laughter, her tears, her scar-filled stomach rising, the way she held my hand to sleep at night. Even on her very last night, we fell asleep holding hands. I felt God in her pulse, and when her pulse stopped.

I often think about the baby boy whose liver, stomach, intestines and pancreas lived inside Lu’s body. I wonder if the two of them are linked in ways I’ll never understand. And if the physical world is connected to the spiritual one, like many of us suspect, then maybe they are bonded beyond biology. I’m so grateful to that little soul, for journeying with her.

Becoming a mother re-wrote me. Becoming the kind of mother Lukah needed for her time on Earth, fundamentally altered the fabric of my being. She taught me to surrender, to release the illusion of control, that I could be soft and strong, silly and wise, and to open my heart wider than I ever thought possible.

These days, mornings feel hard. The harsh reality of a world without her is something I often want to squeeze my eyes shut against.

But then I think of her slinging her bright blue packie over her shoulder and pausing to dig out the dollar store mermaid pen she proudly saved up for. Her journal always ready to jot down any creature or flower she came across. Lukah loved life. And she kept both eyes open to experience it.

So I will keep waking, and walking, and working on holding both the ache and the awe. Grieving and giving thanks. Hurting and healing. Missing you, and carrying your light.