We stood in the kitchen chatting between sips of coffee and bites of cinnamon-sugar toast. Laughing. Joking. Telling stories. Discussing life. Discussing loss. Reminiscing about my mother and how desperately she’s missed.  That’s when the conversation took a slight turn. My dad did the thing he always does before talking about something serious. He makes a sarcastic joke. The kind of joke that makes you…

I sit here reading all of the headlines. A star, dead. His daughter, dead. A husband, a father, a son, a friend, gone. A child, a daughter, a beautiful soul, gone. The shock of it all is intense. The empathy is heartbreaking. In seconds a woman lost the love of her life and one of her children. She will never be the same. What’s worse,…

They show up. They always do. You know, the people you’ve lost. The ones you so desperately ache for and miss. They show up, you just have to pay attention.  Since losing my mother, I’ve found that the hard times are made even more difficult by the fact that she isn’t here for them. She isn’t here to calm my nerves and ease my worries.…

Today I will venture to a seat I haven’t filled in years.  I will quit pretending I can do it on my own. I will quit procrastinating and making excuses. I will quit hiding from my pain and anxieties. I will own the fact that my anxiety is at an all-time high and I will do something about it.  Today I will sit in the…