12d • Discussion
1.5yrs without my daughter...
I am coming up on a year and a half without my daughter… and I still don’t understand how time can move like this. It feels broken.
The last time I saw her feels like it was just yesterday… and also like a lifetime ago. Both truths exist at the same time, and neither one makes sense.
In the beginning, the pain was violent. It felt like I was being torn apart piece by piece… like broken bones pushing through skin. Sharp, constant… impossible to escape.
Now the pain has changed—but it hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s more like those bones are back where they belong… but they healed wrong. Like a deep arthritis that never lets you forget it’s there. You can function… but it aches all the time.
I once heard another grieving mom say it feels like a million little papercuts all throughout the day… every single day. And that’s exactly it.
Not always the same sharp agony as the beginning… but constant. Lingering. Everywhere.
And somewhere along the way… grief stopped feeling like something I had to fight every second.
It started to feel… familiar. Almost like a warm blanket I didn’t ask for… but don’t want taken away either because I’ve come to see it differently now.
Grief is just the flip side of love’s coin.
It’s where my daughter still exists for me.
And in a way that feels complicated to even say out loud… I was “lucky.”
Although I will never know what happened that night, (and not knowing will always sit heavy in me), I do know this - she died peacefully. She simply fell asleep in the bathtub and drowned. She never woke up, never felt any panic.
She came into this world from the warmth of my womb… and she left it cradled in warmth, too.
There’s something in that to hold on to when everything else feels unbearable.
I’m still figuring out who I even am now. This version of me that had to survive something I never thought I could. But I’m still here.
Because of Toni (a LOT of props to her)… because of the friendships I’ve made through Mastergrief… because of my grief tribe… my family.. and all the people who just "get it" without needing it explained.
And because of her.. my beautiful 19 yr old daughter.I just carry her with me now in a different way.
This journey seems impossibly long. But I carry this “glittery backpack of love" on my back… and it’s heavy. Really heavy. But it’s mine.
And it’s my honor—as Marya’s mom— to carry it… and her… with me… every single day.
Even though right now it still leans more toward pain than anything else… I’m holding onto the belief that as I keep doing the work and rebuilding myself, it will slowly begin to feel like more love… more light… and even moments of real joy again. The kind that isn't superficial, but that i can finally feel down in my soul again. 💜
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1.5yrs without my daughter...
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