I am the same age this year as my mom was when she was first diagnosed with breast cancer, 44. Even that feels strange to write let alone to get curious about. I have so many unanswered questions about my mom and who she was a woman, a professional and someone who will never be older than 49.

When we lose our mothers young, they are forever frozen in time, never aging and perhaps our relationship to them doesn’t age either. Sometimes I feel permanently 18 when it comes to my mom, lost, alone afraid, engulfed in sadness. And then there are other days when I feel like she still sees me, sees my life and what I’ve made of it, my children, my marriage and my career. I’m unsure about what she’d think of the choices I’ve made but I’m fairly certain she would be proud that I was able to stand on my own two feet.

My grief has transformed so much over the years. I’m no longer driven by dates that take me to dark places, I’m no longer set off by my grief in ways that take me weeks to recover from. But I can tell you that after 26 years of grieving, it’s still there as a backstory to my choices, my faults and my successes. To know me really is to understand that I lost my mom too soon; that I have felt on my own for much of my adult life; that it has taken me so long to understand that my grief has created ways of thinking and responding to the world that I can actually change, that I don’t have to be ruled by my trauma.

I’m sending you all my love.

- Janet