I stare into the mirror, a place that has always reflected back flaws and imperfections but also glimmers of happiness and beauty. Since losing my mother, it reflects someone I don’t know or recognize.  I look. I stare. I see a woman who looks like me– same hair, same complexion, same identifying marks, and while I know this is a mirror and I’m looking at…

I never knew the way death can multiply, the way it can take living souls that remain and turn them into hollow shells, still alive but not actually living. That all changed the day my mother passed away– because she was dead, I was pretty much dead too.  I paused life at first because it was too harsh to wake up each day knowing my…

I had it wrong when I thought she was invincible. She’d always fixed my wounds and even my many broken hearts so I assumed she was the ultimate fixer, the ultimate healer, with powers only a mother can embrace and utilize– like she was my very own superhero. I had it wrong when I thought she’d never leave, or at least that first she’d have…

Faith and hope can be tricky things. To most people faith and hope are strong and sturdy like the foundation upon which houses and whole communities are built. But for me, those things seem to be fickle and unsteady– present, firm and unbreakable one minute and then the next it’s as if they’ve evaporated as easily as the next puff of air I’ll let escape…