This Is Us
Losing My Daughter Changed Who I Am
The old me is gone, and I’m learning to let the light back in
No, no, there is no going back.
Less and less you are
that possibility you were.
— Wendell Berry
A long time ago, I didn’t have the patience to sit and watch birds. I was a busy self-employed mother of two little girls. I had painfully specific goals that I wanted to achieve.
I recall (hazily and from a distance) the constant sense of urgency and frustration, the touch of desperation, the need for respite, and the willingness to give every ounce of free time to that former version of myself. Maybe I was trying to create the perfect life — and future — for my girls and me. Maybe I thought focusing on a distant horizon, on a nebulous prize won on some far-off day, made me a wise mother, a good mother. An all-knowing, all-sacrificing, everything’s-going-to-be-okay mother.
I thought I could keep them safe and happy if I stuck to a schedule. The changing seasons were a race — one to the next to the next. I focused on the have-to-dos and forgot-to-dos and too-much-to-dos. The miracle of an unremarkable life was lost to me in my eagerness to keep the gears of my schedule turning. I squandered the gift of normalcy with perpetual distraction. It was a stressful and…
