I have been putting this off. I have been putting it off for a long time. When I finally sat down to write, I wanted it to be perfect. I wanted to sound put together. I used to write regularly. Years ago. Poems…songs…feelings. Life got busy and I stopped. So I felt like it would be easy to write again, especially about something so close to my heart. But it’s not been easy. And I think, well, I hope that's ok. I have always been a perfectionist. From a young age I wanted to do things the...

There are some things that happen in our lives that forever change us and give us a completely new set of lenses in which we see the world. The birth of my son Jose Luis changed me in more ways than anyone will ever know. When I became pregnant with him, my husband and I already had four kids, and each one was so different from the other. I remember feeling that Jose was going to be different as well. Call it mother’s intuition, but I felt that this child was going to challenge me in a new...

I was 16 when my Mom was killed by a drunk driver. I’m now 36 and there are days that the grief can still feel new and raw. Many years ago, I attended a Motherless Daughters retre at and for the first time, I felt “normal” in my grief. One of the common themes discussed was how we all felt like we should be “over” our loss and we all truly felt like there was something wrong with us. It felt like a boulder was lifted when we all realized that there isn’t truly an end to our grief. We know...