“Small things such as this have saved me: How much I love my mother – even after all these years. How powerfully I carry her within me. My grief is tremendous but my love is bigger.” Cheryl Strayed

I say this often, but this year feels different. Maybe it’s the whirlwind of everything else that is surrounding it. Maybe it is the wedding. Maybe it’s the fact that I am so.damn.happy. And I just wish she could be here to be a part of it. Maybe I just wish she could still be. But then I have to remind myself, she is. She.is. She is in every moment. She’s in the books I read and the moments I take to slow down and read them. She’s in the things I watch, and the inevitability that I will get tired and stop partway through. She is in the recipes I make and then flipping through of the family book, and trying to do from memory but just needing to remember that one ingredient that makes it *chef’s kiss*. She is in the quiet moments when I wake up and study, before much of the house or the world around me is even aware. In the raucous laughter, side eye glances, and tip-toeing the line. She is in the creative spirit, and the dexterous hands. In the goofy faces and the double jointed finger catches and someday gnarled feet. She is in the way I love my sisters, the way I fight every day for the things I believe in and the people I love. She is in the justice, and the giving back, and the strong will to know, and be, and do better.

But even in all of those ways, and so, so, so many more; she is in here. And sometimes my heart just aches for another moment, another glimpse, another hug, another tête-à-tête, another reminder of her love in the most tangible of ways. Because life just isn’t the same place without her here. And yet…and yet we keep living and working and going about our days. We keep having children, and buying houses (and selling, and buying, and selling). We keep falling in love, and going back to school (again), and progressing in our careers. We keep getting married, and pursuing our dreams. We keep moving.

I’ve come to learn that remembering the good and the bad is the healthiest way for me to process and sit with my grief. It is the best way I know how to travel this path. And as I have shared with countless others, it comes in waves. And maybe in the moments it crashes against you at full force, it is okay to let go, just a little. Not of the person you loved (and love) and lost, but of the grief you hold so dear, so close to your chest. Maybe it is okay to just breathe and let little pieces of that pain and hurt slip through the spaces between your fingers.

I can hear her. I can feel her. I can know, that in her own way, she is present and with me. She knows my joy and sorrow. She knows that through it all, I am okay. I am growing and pursuing my wildest dreams.

She is proud. And that is enough. It humbles my soul.