This marks the half way point....

Today is the 13 year anniversary of my mom's death. She has been gone for half of my life. From here on out, I will have lived longer without her than I got to live with her.

The anniversary is usually a great day for me. I go out of my way to do fun things, see great friends and just appreciate life. As of last night and this morning, I was not feeling that awesome spirit. For some reason the whole thought of her being gone for longer than she was here in my life really put me in a tail spin. But it was thanks to life just moving on around me, and my amazing friends, that I pulled out of it.

I have a close friend dealing with the loss of someone who was very important to her, and it has been through watching her grief and trying to help her that I was able to get a grip on my day.

I would like to rename the stage of grief know as "Acceptance" to "Moving Forward: An Adaptation". While talking to my friend, she mentioned that people expect her to move on, but I think that is the wrong term for it. To me, it is not moving on it is moving forward, which are two extremely different concepts in my mind. When you lose someone that important in your life, you don't bandage it up and pray it doesn't leave a scar, you adapt to a new dynamic and learn to live with your battle wounds.

"You'll heal, but you'll be changed."

My mom died 13 years ago and I am still adjusting and adapting to that. What I thought I had a grip on 2 days ago came crashing down yesterday. There are always new ideas and new thoughts to keep adapting to. I will have many more in my lifetime.

Everybody's grief is different, but I will put here what I wrote to her: Life moves us in weird directions, hurts us in unexpected ways and never really seems to make sense, but you can't lose hope that tomorrow could bring something new your way.

There will always be moments to be angry, sad and confused, and at a total loss for an answer to "why?". We are allowed those. What we are not allowed to do is let them dominate and overshadow the positives.

As someone who has been grieving for 13 years, I am still learning and still have my moments where all I want to do is cry. But, like today, I focus on what I have gained since my loss, and I keep the faith that one day something will make sense... I hope you all have that same faith for yourselves.