A Bereaved Mother. Is that how you’re going to define yourself forever? A friend asked me this. And for a long while the question bothered me. Mostly because it seemed to suggest I’d lost my self as well as my daughter. But A Bereaved Mother is not all of who I am. When my daughter died I lost my old life, and in many ways I changed. Yet I am still me. And if you ask me who or what that is, you will get only an abbreviated account of where I stand at that one moment in time.

And yes, being a mother is forever. I am a proud mother of an amazing live grown son and of a beloved daughter who died. This will always be towards the beginning of the complex outline of how I define myself.