Things happen every day that remind me of my mother and what I lost (the mother-daughter relationship I always wished that I could have had) when she died almost 8 years ago.

It was a struggle to figure out how to forgive her for her addiction and get through my grief and what I learned is that grief is not linear. It doesn’t get a little better each day until it’s over.  It does improve over time, but it also randomly gets more unbearable at unpredictable intervals.

Some days are easy. Some days are awfully difficult. Holidays and life milestones are especially difficult.

What I learned is that the grief doesn’t get smaller, per se. We grow bigger, more empathic, more compassionate. Our love grows richer and takes on deep hues and textures. 

We have to be brave enough to sit with our grief and feel it, be aware of it, allow it to transform our hearts.

We grow around our grief.