EveryCookieCrumbles

Happy Birthday, Gram.

I hate that you’re not here. And I know Grandpa always taught us that hate was a very strong word and we shouldn’t say it, but he’ll have to forgive me this one time because there is no other word I can use right now. I hate that I couldn’t send you a card. I hate that I can’t call you and hear your voice. I hate that I have to replay our last conversation in my head so I can remember your voice. I hate that I have to write these words down, put Happy Birthday on paper, and hope that you see them or hear my thoughts somehow. I hate it all. And I know it’s not good for me to have this anger inside but sometimes I’d rather the anger because I can control it, or project it onto something else, instead of it being just sadness, which sometimes overwhelms me.

I still haven’t gotten to the point where I can look at your picture and just smile. The tears just form on their own no matter how hard I try. I do have faith in knowing that day will come, but it’s not today, or tomorrow, or even next week. Maybe I have to get through the first year without you and then maybe it will be easier. Or maybe it won’t. To be honest, I didn’t think I would still be like this. But it’s your first birthday not here with us. It’s the last of the firsts. The first Mother’s Day without you sucked. I think that happened too fast and I wasn’t ready for it. Skylar’s birthday hit me hard too because you were there the year before even though you weren’t feeling 100% and that meant so much to me. I hung the picture I took of you and her in her room and I see it every day. Then we had all of the first holidays and that wasn’t good at all, Christmas was the worst. So today, your birthday, is the last of the firsts and hopefully this time next year we’ll all be a little better.

Of course, your anniversary is in twelve days. In twelve days you’ll be gone a year. And that bitch called time is in my face, in my head, laughing because there’s nothing I can do about it. To know a year has gone by already is mind blowing. I can’t understand how that time just slipped by so fast. And I think about how many days I cried for you, every time the realization of you being gone hit me all over again. I still can’t believe it some days and that makes me crazy because all of the other people I have lost in my life I’ve accepted that they’re gone. But some part of me won’t accept your loss. And I wish I knew why.

I was thinking last night about puzzles. And how when you’re in the process of doing one, at some point, you’re bound to misplace a piece. And it might take you a minute, or ten minutes or longer to find that piece. And all the while you’re looking for it, you’re filled with aggravation because you know the puzzle is not complete without all of the pieces. And I think that’s how I feel. I’m missing a piece of myself, of my heart, of my life and I don’t feel complete, I don’t feel whole, the picture doesn’t look the same. And no matter how much time passes, I’ll never get that piece back, there will always be an empty space. And that’s the hardest thing to accept.

Gram, I’m sorry I didn’t see you more. I’m sorry that it’s only now that these words and feelings are coming out. I’m sorry I took for granted the fact that you were always around. I’m sorry I didn’t make more family parties, missing the chance to see you and spend time with you. And when I did see you, I’m sorry I didn’t sit down and talk with you more. I’m sorry I never danced with you at a wedding, except for my own. I’m sorry I didn’t learn more from you and absorb the endless knowledge you had about everything. I’m sorry I didn’t bake with you. I’m sorry I didn’t go above and beyond to tell you how much I love you and how important you are to me. I hope you know now. Maybe it’s because of all of these things that losing you has been so hard for me. And that’s just something I have to deal with.

I hope you have a beautiful birthday in heaven with Grandpa. I know you wouldn’t want me to still be so sad, but it’s hard down here without you. I promise to try to do better, and be better, and cry only happy tears remembering the amazing woman you are, remembering all of my special moments with you, remembering the love. Your love is one of the greatest gifts I have ever received and I will treasure it always and carry it with me wherever I go.

Recently my daughter came home with her school work from the week and on the back of one of her papers was a note from her teacher that said ‘She is an awesome role model to the rest of the students in class. You should be very proud’. The following week on her Friday memo, which lets me know how she did in school that week, her teacher typed in bold letters, ‘She is the most caring kid in the class’. I can’t express the amount of pride my husband and I felt because of these two statements.

I shared one of these things on my Instagram page, not to brag, but to acknowledge the kindness that my daughter has within herself. Most of the comments I received were about my daughter and how much people love her and a few congratulated my husband and I for doing such a good job raising her. And while I appreciate those comments, the truth is, I can’t take credit for how kind my daughter is, I don’t want to be given that credit, it’s all her.

Yes, my husband and I try to raise her the right way. We tell her to be kind to everyone she meets, we teach her right from wrong, we explain what it means to be a good person. But at the end of the day all of that is just words, just things we say to her. And while I know she listens, she hears what we’re saying and she understands, it’s up to her to decide whether or not she acts on them. People always say that good kids come from good parents and I mostly agree with that. But if we say that does that mean bad kids come from bad parents? Again, sometimes that is true, but not all of the time.

I believe that most parents do the best that they can to raise their children well. We all fall short sometimes but that doesn’t mean we are bad parents. There are kids in the world who are not nice, we all know bullies exist, but I can’t believe that there are parents out there who teach their kids to behave like this. In elementary school we had a bully in class. He wasn’t just a bully; this kid was an asshole. He was mean just for the sake of being mean. But if you knew his mother, she was the nicest person, as was his sister. I’m sure they were raised the same way, grew up in the same house, but he chose a different path anyway. He was nothing like the rest of his family. No matter how many times he got into trouble he didn’t want to change. And I’m sure people looked to his mother and blamed her, wondered what she was doing wrong, but it wasn’t her fault. Her son made his own choices, for his own reasons. His choice was to be mean which was no one’s fault but his own.

My daughter chooses to be kind. Every day she goes to school she makes that choice. And I can’t take credit for the choices she makes on her own. That’s the way her heart is wired. Every day she chooses to be nice to people. Even when other kids haven’t always been nice to her. She had a girl in her class last year who didn’t always say the nicest things so on days my daughter told me she played with this girl at recess I would ask why and her response was either ‘she had no one else to play with’ or ‘because she asked me to’. It didn’t matter how many times this other girl was mean or times she didn’t want to play with my daughter, she was forgiven. That doesn’t come from me or my husband, that comes from our daughter.

She was at a birthday party once and she didn’t know the other kids there, she only knew the boy whose party it was, so she was shy. She sat with me and I asked her what was wrong and she said ‘I don’t know anyone so no one is talking to me’. Apparently, no one introduced her to the other kids and she was too shy to talk to them first. My instinct was automatically that of a mother whose child is sad because of someone else and I was pissed. So, my advice to her, not my best moment, was ‘well, he’s going to be at your birthday party soon and when he comes you shouldn’t introduce him to your friends and then he’ll know how it feels’. And she looked at me and said, ‘No, Mommy, I wouldn’t do that because that’s not nice’. And she didn’t. At her party she made sure her friend knew every other kid there and they knew him. Even when I try to teach her to be not as nice, she won’t do it, not even with permission. Because she knows how it feels to be sad and she wouldn’t want to do that to anyone else. My daughter is kind.

Last year her Kindergarten teacher told us that our daughter seemed to want to make everyone happy. And on the one hand I think that’s great, but on the other hand, I don’t ever want her to think that someone else’s happiness is more important than her own. I don’t want her to be a pushover and let people walk all over her. And in Kindergarten I think she was a little bit at first because she wanted to be everyone’s friend and she wanted everyone to like her. As the year went on, I noticed little changes in her, and even more now that she’s in first grade. I want her to be assertive and stick up for herself. I don’t want her to think it’s ok for someone to treat her badly. And she’s learning these things and she tells me stories of how she expressed her feelings to others, but she will never be mean. And for the most part, I’m ok with that. I don’t want her to be mean, but I do want her to know that it’s ok to be mean if she absolutely has to be.

My husband sat with her one night and tried to explain ‘stranger danger’ to her. And he told her that if anyone ever tried to touch her or grab her or take her, she should scream at them, and kick them or hit them to get away from them. And she said ‘Daddy, I can’t do that because that’s not nice and I like to be nice to people’. Needless to say it took a while for her to understand exactly what my husband was telling her and after a while I think she got it, and I believe that if she were ever in a bad situation, a little meanness would come out of her, but she’d be sad about it later.

My daughter is kind. There’s a buddy bench in her school at recess where a child can go sit if they have no one else to play with. When she comes home every day I ask her who she played with at recess and if it’s a name I don’t recognize I’ll ask her about them and she’ll tell me that they were sitting on the buddy bench so she went over to them and asked if they wanted to play. She doesn’t always know them well, they’re not always in her class, but she sees them on that bench and she wants to help them and make them not feel alone. And every time she tells me what she did I swear my heart swells.

She’s not only kind with actions, she’s kind with words. There’s a little girl on the bus who is mixed race and one morning she was talking to my daughter and telling her that she was different from her Mom. She has light brown skin but her Mom has white skin. I’m not sure if the girl was sad when she said this, or she just wanted to say it to someone, but without missing a beat my daughter said ‘That’s ok. Different is great!’, and the little girl smiled at her and nodded her head in agreement. And my daughter made a new friend. My daughter is in tune with other people’s feelings and somehow, she knows exactly what to say at just the right time.

My daughter is kind. For the past few years at Christmas she takes her money from her bank and she buys gifts for almost 20 family members. Not because she has to, but because she wants to. And it was her idea the first year she did it. So, she takes her money that she could be spending on herself and she picks out gifts for people to make them feel special. And she accomplishes that every year. Not every kid thinks of others the way she does.

I’ll be the first to admit that I can be a bitch at times. And I’m not always the best mother I can be. And sometimes I have days that put me in the dark. But my daughter is my light. She is my saving grace. She’s always making sure I’m ok, always asking what she can do to make me feel better, always forgiving me when I apologize. She tells me I’m beautiful even when I’m in a torn t-shirt and sweatpants. She says I’m the best on days I feel like the worst. She makes me so incredibly proud to be her Mom and I am so thankful that she chose me. She makes me want to be a better person. She is my life.

My daughter is six-years-old and already she is kinder than I ever was or ever will be. She has the most beautiful soul I have ever seen in anyone. She is magic, she is pure love. She sees the good in everyone, and I hope that she will always be this way. I hope that this crazy world never tries to take that from her. I want her to grow to be a strong woman who doesn’t let anyone or anything change her or her heart. My daughter is kind, and that makes her the best person in the world.

It started on Thanksgiving. I was in the shower and out of nowhere I thought of my Grandma and the tears started to fall. So many that after a few minutes I couldn’t tell what was falling more, my tears or the water from the shower head. I knew it would happen for days leading up to Thanksgiving. I had my Grandmother on my mind for obvious reasons, this being the first major holiday without her, and for my own personal reasons. Last year on Thanksgiving I surprised her with a quick visit at her house on my way into Brooklyn. And as I stood crying in the shower, I could still see her sitting on her couch looking beautiful as ever. I could still see the look on her face when she saw me and my daughter, the warm smile she gave us, the love in her eyes. I only stayed for a few minutes but I knew then that it meant so much to her that I would take the time to go see her. And a year later I hope she knows how much it meant to me too and how tight I hold onto that memory and all of the others with her in them.

This past April, a month after she passed, I had to go to Staten Island for my nephew’s birthday and that was the first time it really hit me that I wouldn’t see her again. Whenever I went to Staten Island to see my best friend, I would stop by my Grandma’s house first to see her for however long I could. It became a thing I would do, especially after my Grandfather died, because I wanted to see her as much as I could. And the first time I couldn’t it hurt more than I thought it would. It’s the little things that I find hit you with the hardest punch. My birthday was three weeks after she died and I cried when I realized there would be no card in the mail from her. And I remember being so mad at myself for not realizing that I should have saved the last one she sent me knowing it probably would have been the last one. But I guess I didn’t want to think like that. I wanted to believe I would have one more card. One more phone call. One more ‘love ya, babe’ and kiss on the cheek. I do remember the last time I got both of those things and I hope I will always remember those days.

A few weeks ago, I sat down to get my Christmas cards done to be sent out. So I got on the computer to do my labels for the envelopes, changed addresses of those that moved, and as I went through the list there was my Grandma’s name, and my hand froze on the mouse and I just sat there for a minute staring at her name, not wanting to delete it from my list. And I was torn on what I should do. As much as I didn’t want to delete her name because that didn’t feel right to me, my other option was to print it out but not put it on a card, and if I did that I would have to throw it out and that somehow seemed worse to me. And I know that this will probably sound so ridiculous to some people but these are the battles that go on in my head. So, I deleted her name and I cried, because these days whenever I think of her I cry. And I know it won’t always be like this but right now it is and I’m ok with that. I didn’t think the holidays would be this hard, but they were, and it sucked sometimes.

December was a shitty month for my little family and I can admit that I wasn’t the best mother and wife that I should be. I felt angry all of the time. I was frustrated at so many things and nothing at the same time. My husband went to twelve-hour work days, six days a week. The holidays were approaching and I felt the weight of having so much to do and all of that weight was on my shoulders because I felt like I was the only one who needed to get everything done. My daughter got an ear and sinus infection, I felt like I was a single parent because my husband got home late every night and was so exhausted, he barely had any energy for anything and the little he did have went to our daughter. I got mad at stupid, little things that I shouldn’t have and yelled a lot more than was necessary. And I truly didn’t know what was wrong with me or why I was acting the way that I was. And then the day came where it all erupted and came to the surface.

I was texting my husband and I typed the word Grandma and the flood gates opened up and I started to cry. And not just a regular cry, I sobbed uncontrollably. The cry where your whole-body shakes, where you’re bent over because the weight of your sorrow is too much for you to hold up any longer. And the tears just kept coming and I let them fall while I screamed out the pain because I couldn’t hold it in any longer. This anger, this sadness had been building for weeks and I kept pushing it down hoping it would go away on its own, knowing it wouldn’t. I was delaying the inevitable because I didn’t want to acknowledge my feelings. I didn’t want to admit how angry I was that my Grandma was gone. Not just sadness, actual anger. Angry at God, angry at the world, angry at people who don’t value what they have in their life, angry at myself.

My Grandmother was full of life. Well into her eighties she was living, not just surviving, not just waiting around to die. She had so many friends, she had her club she would go to every day until she physically couldn’t anymore. She went to banquets, she played games, she did talent shows where she sang with the most beautiful voice. She went on trips, she got her hair and nails done, she was still cooking and baking until she just didn’t have the strength anymore. She did as much as she could for as long as she could, and then she was taken. She still had so much life to live, so many things to do, so many memories to make, so much love to still give. If she were here and physically able to, she would still be dancing and singing. And I’m angry that she’s not.

And I’m angry because I see so many people who live like they’re just waiting to die. Who complain about every little ache and pain, who always see the dark side when there is so much light shining in their lives. My Grandmother saw the light in everything, and for most of us, she was the light. And I can admit that I’m mad at myself because I don’t always live the right way, the way my Grandma lived. And by doing that I feel like I’m disrespecting her and her legacy. And I don’t want to do that anymore. I want to live and laugh and love like she did.

On the day I let it all out I knew I had two apologies to make. When my daughter came home from school, I looked in her eyes, with tears in my own, and I said I was sorry for how I had been acting. I apologized for being a lousy mother because I was. And her little face looked back at mine, smiled, and she said ‘it’s ok Mommy’ and she hugged me and forgave me just like that. I am not the best parent in the world, far from it, but the one thing I do right is apologize when I’m wrong. My daughter needs to know that I make mistakes and I have to take responsibility for them, and that I respect her and love her enough to apologize to her when I’m wrong.

When my husband came home, I looked in his eyes, cried some more and said ‘I’m so sorry’ and right after that, without even thinking, the words out of my mouth were ‘I miss my Grandma’. And I do miss her terribly. And I don’t think I realized that I would feel this sadness so deeply. And that some days, it just comes out of nowhere.

Today is December 30^th and I knew I needed to write this down today or tomorrow because I didn’t want to bring it with me into the new year. Writing is my therapy. Now that it’s down on paper I can let it go and not look back, not dwell on it because that’s what I do until I get the words out. I already know that next year is going to have some special moments for my big family. One of my cousins is getting married, two more are having babies. Our family is still growing. And I know my Grandma will be there for every moment, every laugh, every happy tear, every dance and every song. She is in the things that we do, the words that we say, the love in our hearts. I want to live the rest of my life in her honor, and if I can do that then I know I’ll be living the best life possible.

I have always been a worrier. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t worry about things from small to big. When I was in school, on the day I knew I was having a test, my stomach would be in knots. And before I left the house my mother would give me a Certs mint to calm my nerves. It worked for my stomach, but not for my head. As I’ve gotten older, I have more things to worry about even though most of the things that bother me aren’t a big deal, I just make them bigger than they need to be. And only recently have I realized that worrying about something is really just choosing to think about the negative of a situation instead of the positive. Things can go two ways, but by worrying I only concentrate on the negative way they can go instead of focusing on the positive way. And I have to say that this way of thinking has messed me up in a lot of ways.

I don’t know when it started or, more importantly, why it started. I don’t think I ever worried as a young kid. I maybe got nervous about things but never to the extreme. Each time I got up to bat at softball I was nervous that I’d strike out but that quickly passed because I was confident in my ability to hit the ball. As time passed, my confidence dwindled and the worry, the negativity kicked up a notch. I wasn’t confident in who I was and what I could do so I would focus on the negative and worry that I wasn’t good enough or I wasn’t doing enough. I developed a fear within myself that had no place in my life. And I took that fear wherever I went, like a security blanket. That fear lived in everything I did, and I think eventually that fear took over.

I hate being negative, it’s the worst thing about myself. But, like everything else it’s hard to change your way of thinking when you’ve done it for so long. But it’s time to change because I see a part of myself in my daughter and I just want to grab that part before it gets inside of her. She’s so young and sometimes she’s afraid to try new things. Her response is always ‘what if?’ and her little mind goes to what could go wrong if she takes that leap. And it saddens me because I can’t help but wonder if she sees me doing these things. Does she sense that this is how I go through life or is she just being six and she doesn’t understand all of that yet? And when these things happen my mind automatically goes to ‘oh my God, what if she’s like this all her life? What if she’s just like me?’. And a panic sets in within me and I can’t see passed the fear and the negativity sets in and this anger puts its hooks into me and doesn’t let go and I instantly get so mad at myself for not being able to see passed the fear. I have to learn to take a step back, breathe a little, and realize that instead of worrying that my daughter might be like me I have to find positive ways to make sure that doesn’t happen. I know my flaws, I acknowledge them all of the time. And I know how to change them but I’m always stuck somewhere in the middle of who I am and who I want to be.

Everyone looks at the negative side of things sometimes. It’s a natural reaction in certain situations. And I don’t think it’s because we want to, it just happens. At that particular time the negativity is in our face. When something bad happens all we can see is what’s wrong and we can’t see passed it to all of the positive that’s in our life. We focus on the bad because we know that the good will still be there when we’re done. Instead we should focus on the positive to help the bad situations pass faster and easier.

For me, the negativity is so much louder in my head than the positivity. It screams at me. It tears me down so low that sometimes I find it hard to get up. The loudest voices in my head are mean and they drown out any good that might be trying to speak. Looking back at certain times in my life I can see how angry I was but if I look deeper the reality is that I was depressed but I didn’t know it, or maybe I just didn’t want to admit it, so I masked it with anger and that’s all anyone saw. And I would always get the question ‘what are you so mad about?’ but the truth is I couldn’t get passed the negative thoughts and I was hurting, deeply. I was drowning and I couldn’t catch my breath.

For years, even when things were good in my life, I would let the negativity back in like an old friend. It took me a long time to let certain things go, to realize that the past was over, it couldn’t be changed, but I could be. I’ll still dip my toes in negative water but I try not to dive in head first anymore. Because I look back and I see how much time I’ve wasted being negative. It seriously sucks the life out of you. It attacks you mentally, physically and emotionally and it has beaten me in all of those ways. And I’m tired of feeling defeated, feeling beaten down. I need to take control of my emotions and I have to start now, or else I’m never going to do it.

I look around and I see people who are truly miserable. Not because anything has happened to them, but because they choose the negative every day even when they are surrounded by so much positivity. I don’t ever want to be like them. I can’t be. I have to stop myself from going that far into the ocean of misery. I can’t swim and if I ever went there, I know I wouldn’t come back to shore. I refuse to ever be labeled as miserable. That’s not who I want to be. And realistically, with all of the good I have in my life I can’t be miserable, because that would be so disrespectful to the life I have right now.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be the person who always sees the glass as half full, but I no longer want to be the person who always sees it as half empty. I just want to be the person who is thankful that there’s something in my glass. And that something is a husband who loves me, a daughter who makes my world beautiful, a roof over my head, food on my table, clothes on my back and family and friends who light up my world. With all of this in my life there’s no room for negative thoughts anymore. I want to focus on the positive, on the beauty in my life, on all the good that I have and the goals I want to reach.

Next month starts a brand-new year. Not only a new year but a new decade. This last decade had good moments for me and bad moments that I have carried with me further than I should have. I will not take them with me any longer. I have ten new years in front of me. They are shiny and bright and waiting for me to leave my mark on them. They are a clean slate, a fresh start to finally be the person I want to be, to finally stop stalling and write the best chapters of my life. I’m sure I’ll have some bad times, that’s just life. But I plan on making them little footnotes in the chapters that I write. I’m closing the book on my past and starting the journey to write the best story of my life.

My daughter turned six in August and every year since she turned one I say the same thing, ‘I can’t believe she’s…’ (insert number here), because six years later it’s still a shock to me that she’s a year older. It’s a shock that another year of her life, 365 days, have passed since the last time I uttered that sentence. The night before her birthday I was laying in bed, not sleeping of course, which is often the case with a mind like mine, but I laid there thinking ‘how did this happen?’. When did it change from talking about her life in days, weeks, months to years? When did it shift from saying I have a six-month-old to saying I have a six-year-old? How did all of that time pass in the blink of an eye? And I know it sounds cliché but that is how fast these years have gone by.

My daughter was born premature so the first two months of her life were definitely measured in days. Fifty to be exact because that’s how many days she was in the NICU. And I sit here six years later and I can remember exact moments, specific things that happened on certain days. I can still hear the beeping of her machines, I remember the first time I laid eyes on her, and the feeling I got when I held her to my chest for the first time. I can remember those moments perfectly because time moved slowly back then. My world was wrapped up in this little human being. My life was within the four walls of the NICU room that she was in. I didn’t let myself get distracted by any bullshit, by any outside interference. I couldn’t tell you anything that was going on in the world between August and September of 2013 because I lived every minute of that time with my husband and my daughter. And so, I can remember so much of it because those minutes seemed to last hours, those hours seemed like days and those days felt like forever.

Fast forward six years, and it actually feels like someone hit the fast forward button, and I can remember many things that happened in my daughter’s life, but not the way I remember those fifty days. I still have the calendars from the first year of her life and so I can look back and tell you the days she had certain milestones. But without them being written down I couldn’t tell you the exact day she took her first step or said her first word. I was there. I saw it happen and heard her say it but that moment isn’t etched in my mind like others because I wasn’t fully present. I’m sure I had other things going on, other distractions, a million things on my mind that had to be done and so these moments went by so fast that my brain couldn’t snap the picture. I lost focus and the reality of that is I lost time. I lost time with my daughter even though I have been with her every day of her life. I took that time I had with her for granted and I can never get those moments back.

And I think that’s a problem for many people. So many times we say ‘I wish I had more time for…’, or ‘I wish there were more hours in the day’. That’s just unrealistic so what we’re doing is making excuses for why we don’t do more with our time. There will never be 25 hours in a day. Never. That’s just reality. But does that mean that the 24 we do have is really not enough? Time is the hardest thing in the world to accept. It is the one thing we cannot stop, we cannot pause, and we cannot change. Sixty seconds is a minute, sixty minutes is an hour, twenty-four hours are a day. Those are facts. That can’t be changed no matter what we do or don’t do. Whether or not I choose to get out of bed in the morning does not stop the hands of the clock from moving. Time goes on whether I participate in it or not.

We all understand time, it’s not that hard to comprehend. Day turns into night, which turns into the next day, into the next week, month, and year. We all understand the process but that doesn’t mean we’ve learned to accept it. It boggles my mind to think that my daughter is six years old, that my Grandmother has been gone for seven months, or that my cousin Joseph was taken from us over twelve years ago. These three things completely blow my mind. How the fuck did all that happen? And where did all that time go? And what have I really done with all that time that is now lost forever? And just these thoughts alone are why I feel that time messes with my mind the most. And I’m sure it’s like that for many others. How many people would just like to press pause or rewind? Just stop time for one minute so that we can all catch our breath. It always seems out of our control because we feel like there’s nothing we can do. But that’s not true.

Today is Thursday and I’m sure most people are somewhere counting down the hours to get to the weekend. And the truth is that many people start doing that as soon as their alarm goes off on Monday morning. Monday comes and we’re already praying for the weekend to get here. Think about that. We can’t wait to get through five days of our life just to get to the two days that we think will bring us more enjoyment. Five days that we would gladly give up so we can have two days with no work, or no school or getting up early. As a society we rush through the week because we only look forward to the weekend. And to me, this is the biggest problem most people have.

We’re guilty of always looking forward to something else instead of trying to find happiness in the moment while we’re in it. Monday comes and we wish it was Friday. A new school year starts and we start counting down to Christmas break. It’s October and there’s already Christmas decorations in the store because all the Halloween decorations were up in August. In the summer we see advertisements for fall clothes and in the middle of a snowstorm in March bathing suits are back on the racks to get you ready for the next summer. We plan holidays months in advance, we book birthday parties and vacations a year in advance. We are always looking ahead for the next great thing to happen in our life instead of having a bunch of great moments right now. Time is only getting the best of us because we are letting it happen. Time is rolling on but we are definitely the ones who are stepping on the gas pedal.

You always hear people say ‘live each day like it was your last’ and I understand the saying but it’s not realistic. But that doesn’t mean that each day, or most days, we can’t create at least one moment that we’ll remember. Whether that’s being home for a family dinner, putting your phone down to play with your kids, or just silencing the world for thirty minutes and taking time for yourself. We have to stop concentrating on how great the future might be because the truth is that no one knows what the future holds no matter how hard we plan for it. So many things are out of our control. And for the most part time is one of those things. We can’t stop the minutes from passing by but we can try to slow them down by being more aware of how we’re choosing to spend those minutes. Why can’t Tuesday night be just as great as Saturday night?

Many things in life are necessary. We have to work in order to have a roof over our head, food on the table and everything else we need to survive. But at the end of our days if all people can say is that we were hard workers then we really never lived at all and we wasted whatever time we were given. Nobody wants that. We each have a choice to make time for what we really want out of life. Find the strength to choose wisely.

We always think there’s time for us to change. There’s time for us to do all the things we want to do so we put things off. And the days turn into years and we still haven’t done the things that truly make us happy. It could all end tomorrow so shut off your phone, take a day off from work, spend time with your family, read a good book, sit in the sun, take the time now instead of next year. Life is meant to be lived, not just survived. Think of all the people who have no more tomorrows to look forward to. Time will never stop for anyone. The trick is to steal as many moments as you can while you can. Moments that you will remember forever. These stolen moments are what life is all about, they are the things that give our life meaning, the things that define us.

You said her name. You took it upon yourself to talk about her. We were all in our own conversations and out of the corner of my eye I saw you stand up bringing all of our attention to yourself. And before you opened your mouth, I knew you were going to mention her. The second her name touched your lips I felt sick. More than that I felt a rage from inside of me that went throughout my whole body and I wanted to scream at you, to tell you that you had no right to talk about her. That anyone else in the world could speak about her but not you. But I didn’t say anything. I felt eyes on me from all different directions. Eyes that pleaded with me to keep my mouth shut and just let you have this moment. And so, I went against everything my head and my heart were telling me and I sat there while you talked about her.

You shared a story that was more about you then it was about her. You played us a scene from your life and cast her as an extra when she should have been the star. You tried to convey real emotion but to my ears it fell very short. And as you spoke of her, or tried to, I wanted to ask you if you were going to share another memory of you and her. A memory that she shared with me one day at her house, with tears in her eyes as she told me how you saw her one day and ignored her. And she couldn’t understand what she did to make you act that way. And I saw the sadness and the hurt in her eyes as she spoke and that was the day I lost all respect for you. Just like that, with one story, from one person, it was gone. You fell from the pedestal I once tried to put you on for all those years that I defended you and your actions. But that day, seeing tears in her eyes, there was no defense for you.

You started to talk about family and I laughed to myself as the bullshit just kept coming out of your mouth. I laughed because the truth is that the only family you care about is the one you made for yourself, not the one that was given to you. You only care about yourself and your world and we are not even a thought in your life unless it’s convenient for you. And she was no exception when she sure as hell should have been. And that cannot be forgiven so easily.

I sat there in my anger feeling like my head was going to explode. And I listened to your lies and your bullshit promises that you were never going to keep. You knew it, I knew it, everyone else knew it but you said them anyway as if we were supposed to believe that a big change with you was going to occur. Maybe someone was gullible to believe your words, but it wasn’t me.

I’ve tried very hard not to think about it after all this time but it sneakily makes its way into conversations and I remember how I felt. I push it down over and over again but it still finds its way into my head. And the feelings are as fresh today as they were back then. So, I’m releasing them onto this paper hoping it will help me to let it go. It’s over and done with, I can’t change it. And maybe it will help me, and maybe it won’t because the question that runs through my mind the most is ‘am I angrier at you for talking about her or at myself for listening?’.

I hate the F word. Absolutely. Hate. It. I cringe when I hear other women say it. My niece has used it many times and I felt both angry and sad. And the one time my 5-year-old used it on herself I wanted to cry. I would rather her say ‘fuck’ a million times then say the word ‘fat’ in reference to herself even once.

I see many women on social media who have taken the word fat and given it power, turned it into something beautiful, something to not be ashamed of, and I applaud these women immensely. But I’m not one of those women. For me, fat has always been a bad word, a shameful word, something you should never become.

I have been heavy all of my life. Some years I weighed more than other years, some years I weighed less, but I’ve never been skinny. Although looking back at some old photographs I would give anything to be the size I was in high school, realizing now that I wasn’t as big as I thought. I try not to use the word fat in conversation, I do my best not to say it out loud, and I never say it in front of my daughter. But in my head, my bullies, my enemies, my inner critic scream it all the time. For years I would look in the mirror and that’s all I would see. I would look at myself every time and only see the extra weight staring back at me. The thickness in certain places, the rolls that I knew shouldn’t be there. I’m in my 40’s and it’s still a struggle.

And as I think about it, I try to pinpoint when the negative thoughts started and why. Like I said, being bigger than other people has always been a problem. I was always heavier than my classmates in elementary school and I was the girl whose body developed quicker than everyone else. I’ve always had a big chest which never helped the situation. But when I think about being a kid my weight was never a problem for me, I hardly ever thought about it, and kids I knew never made fun of me for it. I never saw myself as fat back then even though there were times that I was. And I think that’s because I had confidence in myself with other things. I didn’t care if anyone thought I was fat because I could hit a ball better than most kids, and throw a spiral further than most of the boys. And my weight wasn’t an issue because I was known for other things. When I was in elementary school, no one cared. I had my friends and they loved me for me. Being fat wasn’t a ‘thing’ yet. I was a tomboy, still am today, and that meant that the boys liked me because I knew sports, and the girls liked me because they knew I wasn’t going to steal their boyfriend. And that followed me all the way to high school. My confidence in my abilities back then made me who I was, my weight had nothing to do with me.

Food has always been an issue for me. I realized long ago that I am definitely an emotional eater. I eat when I’m depressed, I eat when I’m angry, and since I have spent a lot of time being both of those things, weight was always gained. I grew up in an Italian family where every Sunday we would go to my father’s mother’s house and before I stepped foot into the apartment a meatball was shoved in my face. And then another, and another. Dinner was a four-course meal and pasta was put on your plate and the minute you were done, you got more. No one even asked if you wanted more, you just got it and you were expected to eat it because 1) you couldn’t insult your Grandmother and 2) there were starving children somewhere. So, you ate, and ate, and ate. In those few hours I probably ate three days’ worth of food. And soda was everywhere. I don’t think I ever drank water at my grandmother’s house. And I never questioned anything because as a kid you just do what you’re told. You don’t have much of a voice. You eat what’s on the table and you don’t complain. This was my normal and back then it didn’t bother me. Food equaled love and I ate it up.

But again, none of it bothered me back then because I didn’t know enough to let it bother me. My family never discussed weight, never talked about healthy eating. It wasn’t a big thing when I was growing up. And as a kid your parents bought what they could afford and you ate whatever was put in front of you, sometimes more than once a week. Nobody talked about eating healthy. I hated vegetables as a kid so I never ate them so the healthiest thing I probably ate was salad, but I would drown that in dressing so that doesn’t really count.

When I think about it now it does bother me because even as an adult I feel bad if I leave food on a plate. If I throw anything away, I feel guilty. It’s another brainwashing thing where I feel like I’m wrong if I don’t clean my plate. I’m an adult who has made many changes in the way I look at food but on any given night I can still feel like the little girl who can’t leave food even if I’m full. It’s hard to retrain your brain, but I’m working on it.

I don’t know how old I was but I can remember a time I became aware of my weight. I started to get marks on my thighs but didn’t know what they were so my mother took me to the doctor who simply stated ‘they’re stretch marks. She put on a lot of weight’. And that was that. We left with the answer we needed. I don’t think anything else was ever said about it, but I remember feeling embarrassed and ashamed. Another time I was at the doctor and he straight up called me a ‘fat ass’ because I had gained weight since the last time he saw me. Shortly after that he had a complete mental breakdown but that didn’t matter to me. He said it, I heard it and it stayed with me. I don’t think I told anyone and back then it didn’t bother me. I already developed my thick skin and put a wall up so nothing got to me. And yet, I can still remember it, clear as day today. Maybe I imagined it, maybe it never happened, but I don’t believe that.

I didn’t grow up having negative thoughts about myself, that wasn’t my mentality. In high school, I think it started a little, but it was never about my weight. It was about all of the other things that I felt different about. I would honestly have to say that my negative body image started after I got married. I was a heavy bride but on that day I didn’t care. My wedding day was only one of two days where I felt I was beautiful. I felt beautiful in my dress, in my make-up, from head to toe I felt it. The other day was at my cousin’s wedding where I was five months pregnant. My belly was showing, I had the pregnancy glow and I felt beautiful. But that’s it. Two days out of forty-three years. I got married in October of 2001 and I put on a lot of weight in those first few months so by the time January came I was the heaviest I had ever been, and for the first time in my life I really hated it, and the negative thoughts entered my brain.

The first time my husband called me beautiful I’m sure I either laughed in his face or had a sarcastic comment as my response. And that went on for years. To this day, after being together for over twenty years, I still can’t completely accept a compliment from him. I’ve gotten better, I don’t laugh anymore, but it’s still hard to think he sees me like that. Before him I don’t remember anyone ever telling me I was beautiful. It might have happened, but I have no memory of that.

At my heaviest, whenever I was out with my husband, I felt people staring at me with disgust. Wondering what he was doing married to someone as fat as me. I heard the names they called me, I felt their eyes look me up and down, I saw their faces filled with hatred. And of course, none of this actually happened. This was all in my head. This is what my brain made me think. I projected it onto myself and felt it so deeply that I believed it to be true. I disgusted myself, I hated myself, I couldn’t look at myself and I wondered why he married me. What could he possibly see in me? How could he stand me at the weight I was at? There was a long stretch of time where I would only have sex in the dark because I didn’t want him to look at me and see all of the extra pounds. I was afraid he would get disgusted at what he saw, even though I knew he loved me more than anything and he never said a negative thing about my appearance. In some ways I think I blocked him from loving me because I didn’t think I deserved it.

I used to hate looking in the mirror. I would step out of the shower, dry off, and get dressed as fast as I could without catching a glimpse of myself and everything I hated. I used to hate looking at old photographs of myself, especially at my heaviest, not being able to stand the sight of myself. Used to, past tense. I’m 43 years old and it’s only in the past few years that I’ve started to change my body and my mind. It is a daily process and some days are hard as hell. I’ve learned to eat better and not eat my feelings away. I’ve learned to make better choices so that I can feel better physically and mentally. It’s a tough thing to change the way we think about ourselves after doing it a certain way for so long. But I have to, for myself, for my sanity and for my daughter.

I’ve learned that the scale is the devil and I try to stay away from it. I’m not going to find myself in the numbers that I see. I am more than that. I was never the person those numbers said I was and I have to let her go. I know I’m getting healthier because I feel it in my soul, I feel it in the way my body moves and the way my clothes fit. I know my mind is getting healthier because those negative thoughts are being replaced by better ones. Not every day is a positive one, not every thought boosts my confidence, but I’m learning to silence my inner demons.

Today I can look in the mirror and admire the curves that weren’t there before. I can look at old photographs and feel proud of how far I have come, proud that I’m not as heavy as I once was. I can look at my body and admire the scar that shows my toughest battle. I once hated my body for letting me down and losing two babies. But my body did that so I would have the beautiful, amazing daughter I have today. And on the day she was born, that same body stayed strong and fought death. I have many scars, some you can see, some you can’t, but I am grateful for all of them. They made me who I am today. Am I the weight I want to be? No, and I may never be. And for the first time in my life I’m ok with that. The number on the scale is going to fluctuate from year to year. But I will still be me. I don’t want to worry about my size anymore. I want to be healthy when I can, and indulge when I want, never going to either extreme. I just want to be happy with the body I have.

Every time I get dressed in front of my daughter she tells me I look beautiful. Doesn’t matter what I’m wearing, she never hesitates to say ‘Mommy, you look beautiful’. And I smile and say ‘thank you baby. You’re beautiful too’. She’s watching me, taking in everything I do and say. And I want to be a good example to her so she never feels the way I did for one day of her life. I want to protect her from that kind of pain. And I can only do that by teaching her to love herself, every inch, every pound, every part. I don’t want her to hate the F word. I want her to be so happy with herself that she doesn’t ever think about it. I am blessed in this life, in this body. My husband loves me, my daughter loves me and I am slowly starting to love me too.

It’s been 92 days since you were taken from us. And every one of those days I have thought about you and missed you terribly. And on most of those days I have cried. I still can’t believe that you’re gone. Or maybe I can believe it but I don’t want to. I have your funeral card where I can see it every morning and every time I do my heart stops for a second from the shock that you’re not here. Three months later and I still feel shock every time I see a picture of you. I wonder sometimes if that will ever stop, I’m not sure it will. My head and my heart are in constant battle with each other. My heart tries to be kind and gets me to just think of you being at your house, like always. But my head is the cruel truth and it makes reality sink in faster than I want it to. I want to live in those fantasy moments just a little bit longer before I let you go again.

I knew that losing you would be hard. But I didn’t think it would be this hard. This gut wrenching, hit by a train feeling, hardest think I have ever gone through in my life. But here I am, crushed the same as I was 92 days ago. Maybe even more. When you passed and I told my friends, their responses were the same, ‘I’m so sorry, I know how much she meant to you’, ‘I’m so sorry, I know how much you loved her’. And it made me feel good to know that people knew what you meant to me. I told others how much I adored you. But then regret set in as I wondered ‘did I ever tell you?’. I don’t think I ever did. I’m sure you know that I love you, I said it every time I saw you or spoke to you on the phone. I showed you every time I came for a visit or stopped by for a quick hello on my way to somewhere else. But I don’t think that you really know that you are the most amazing woman in my life. And I won’t put that into past tense because every day until forever you always will be the most amazing woman in my life. And I will always keep you here in the present, in this moment, until my last day, because I don’t think I’ll ever find a way to let you go completely. And I don’t think I will ever want to.

So, I now live with this sense of regret and sadness that I never told you everything I wanted to. And maybe writing it down will be therapeutic for me and at least help a little. And maybe you’ll see these words and you will know.

As a kid I thought you were invincible. You were there the day I was born, and you were there every day of my life for almost 43 years. That’s amazing to me and I know I am one of the luckiest people in the world. Only my sister is luckier for being the oldest grandchild and having you in her life for an extra two years. Obviously I know that death is a part of life, the worst part, but I know it’s inevitable. But as a kid I never thought about it. I had my family, this large, incredible family with you at the heart of it all and I never thought that would change. As the years went by and I went through my teens, my twenties, thirties and the start of my forties, you were there and I think I convinced myself that you weren’t going anywhere. I couldn’t comprehend what that would even be like, what that would feel like. Not having you in this life was a problem I would never have to solve; it couldn’t happen because it would put our entire universe in chaos. You are our center and with that center removed I feel off balance and I don’t know how to get myself right.

The whole month of May didn’t feel right to me, I wasn’t myself and I couldn’t understand why. And I think I realized that within that month my heart and my mind caught up with each other and my heart has let go of the fantasy of you being at home and I just haven’t seen you in a while. My heart has accepted that you’re gone and it became so much more painful for me. That week leading up to Mother’s Day was a tough week for our whole family. The anniversary of Grandpa’s passing, of losing Dakari and Derrick, it was one of the most emotional weeks I’ve ever had in my life. And then Mother’s Day came and I lost it all. I sobbed for you so hard, accepting the fact that I couldn’t call you and instead replaying our last conversation from your birthday in my head. And I cried for my mother and my aunts and uncles who had to get through the day without you. It’s just not easy. Everything in this family revolved around you. Every party, every celebration you were there in the middle of it all. And I don’t understand how we’re supposed to be the same without our heart.

Gram, I adore you. I love and admire you beyond what any words could express. You are the ideal role model for what a mother and wife should be, and I know that I could never come close to the heights you reached being both these things for so many years. But I will always try because being even a little bit of the woman you are makes me a better person, a better mother and a better wife. I watched you for so many years and you made it look so easy. As if having 11 kids was a piece of cake. Raising them and loving them in their own way came naturally to you. I’m sure you had hard times, how could you not, but I never heard you complain about anything, I don’t think anyone did.

You accepted these roles with grace and beauty. You love beyond measure and everyone in your life felt that love every time they were in your presence. There are so many of us grandchildren and great grandchildren and you loved each of us the same and differently. The same in the amount of love you gave each of us, different in the way we were loved. Only you could acknowledge that we are all different and what one of us needs doesn’t mean that’s what all of us needs. We each experienced different things with you, learned different things from you, shared special memories that only we hold dear. And that is amazing, that is a gift that you gave each one of us. Some of my memories are different from my cousins, my relationship with you is different, I think all of ours are, but there is such beauty in that. And we are forever thankful.

I admire everything about you but I have never respected you more than I did when I saw you take care of Grandpa when he got sick. What you did for your husband was nothing short of a miracle and it showed the depths of the love you shared with him. I visited you many times and I watched when he wasn’t himself, when he acted mean towards you because of the disease and you would sit there and take it all in, not letting him see how much it affected you. You would smile, or rub his arm and constantly tell him everything was ok. The comfort and kindness you gave him is not something many women could do. I know you’re probably saying, ‘Lee, I’m his wife it’s my job to take care of him’, and I know that’s true but everything you went through would have broken a lesser woman. The strength you had, the love you showed, everything I witnessed during that time are things I will carry with me forever. And when life gets hard, I think of you and all you went through and I tap into your strength and I carry on, just like I saw you do so many times.

I miss you. More than I have ever missed anyone in my entire life. I don’t feel whole. There’s a piece of my heart that belongs to you and it’s hurting. And I know it won’t always be this hard, but right now it is and I think it will be for a while longer. One day I will be able to look at your picture and not cry because you are gone, but smile for all of the memories I have of you. No one in this world will ever mean to me what you do, no one will ever take your place in my heart. Your shoes are too big to be filled by anyone else in this world. There will never be another person I look up to and idolize more than you.

I find it very hard to talk about you in the paste tense. Those words don’t taste good in my mouth. I won’t ever stop loving you, my memories of you won’t ever go away. I can still smell your perfume, I can still feel the softness of your face on my cheek when you kissed me and I can still hear you saying ‘love ya, babe’ as I left your house. I can still feel your presence; I can still see you sitting with my daughter. You are here. You are part of me and I will take you with me forever.  

I was born into a Catholic family and was raised Catholic. I went to church every Sunday and I received all of my sacraments. But no one ever asked me if I wanted to be a Catholic. And I understand that this is just the way life is; you’re born into a family and you take on their religion. My parents are Catholic, their parents were Catholic and so on. And for many years of my life I went along with it, took it for what it was, never questioned anything. For most of my life I feel like I was forced to believe whatever I was taught by the church. I had no say. Whatever the church believed, whatever my parents believed, along with all other Catholics, was to be what I believed. But as I got older, I developed my own opinion about religion and what it means to me. And while I still believe some of the things I was taught, most of it doesn’t make sense to me anymore.

Do I consider myself a Catholic? I’m really not sure and I honestly don’t think it even matters. Why do I have to put a label on my beliefs? I don’t go to church anymore unless I have to for a funeral or a wedding. So other Catholics may say that I’m ‘lapsed’ because I don’t practice the religion, and that’s fine with me. I don’t feel like I need to physically be in a church to come across God. If I’m being honest, the church has never done anything for me. I have never felt anything extraordinary being in a Catholic church. No warm, fuzzy feelings come over me. Mass has always been boring to me, and maybe comes across as a little crazy, even cultish.

Think about it. Every week it’s the same thing. I could sit here right now and tell you what goes on from start to finish. The only thing that changes from week to week are the readings. Other than that, as a group, we all stand at the same time, we sit and kneel at the same time, we recite the same prayers at the same time every week, word for word. And when I do step foot in a church for a mass, I try my hardest not to have the prayers echo in my head. I try to think of a song or a movie scene but the words still go off somewhere in my mind and I swear it feels like I’ve been brainwashed all these years. And after all of the prayers are done and the gospel is read a priest stands on the altar and tells you what he thinks about what he just read. His interpretation. In essence, he’s telling you how you should feel. But no one ever asks how YOU actually feel or what you think about what is being told to you. My opinion doesn’t matter, my feelings don’t matter and that’s what I’ve been taught all these years. Whatever is in the Bible is the only truth we are allowed to know. It’s written for us to see, and learn and believe, with no questions asked. And you’re either with it or you’re not, and I guess I’m not anymore.

At my Grandmother’s funeral the priest talked about her suffering. And he assured all of us that God was with her while she suffered and we should all take comfort in that. And as I sat in the pew, my head was about to explode. I wanted to stand up and scream ‘He was the one who caused her suffering. So, it’s real nice that He comforted her, but she wouldn’t have needed comfort if He didn’t make her sick in the first place’. My Grandmother didn’t deserve to suffer, and I’m not saying anyone does, but she of all people DID NOT deserve it. When she got sick, I was so mad at God. At the time she was 88 and I thought ‘what the fuck is the point in making her sick now?’ If it was her time and God wanted her so bad, He could have taken her peacefully in her sleep one night. She deserved that act of kindness, of mercy from her God because she dedicated so much of her life to the church and her faith. She left her fate in God’s hands and believed in His plan. And while I may not agree with everything she believed in, I respected her faith immensely.

As a Catholic I was taught, or maybe this is just how I interpreted things, that all the glory goes to God. Everything good in our life is because of Him. But the bad stuff that happens is on us, is because of the poor choices we have made in life. How fucked up is that logic? Everything good that happens to me, everything I may accomplish is all because of God, but the bad things I do or go through are my fault. We can never blame God for that. That can really mess with a person’s mind. And I just can’t get on board with that way of thinking. I don’t blame God for the things I have been through in my life, or for the bad things that have happened. That’s just life. But I’m also not going to give Him all the credit for the good in my life, some things maybe, but not all. I have a roof over my head, food on my table and clothes on my back because of my husband who goes to work every day to make the money to provide for his family. And I thank my husband for that because he made the decision to do that for me and our daughter. He doesn’t have to, but he chooses to.

Many people are born with a gift, I truly believe that. And I believe that gift comes from a higher power. It is put into us when we first come into this world. But what we choose to do with that gift is up to each individual. Do I think my writing is a gift? Sometimes I do. And like I said once before I wasted that gift for many years. Should I blame God for that? Absolutely not, that’s on me and the choices I have made my whole life. The other side of that is if I had made a ton of money from my writing or written a bunch of books, should God get all the credit? Absolutely not. That would also be on me and all of my effort and hard work. So, I can thank this higher power for giving me this gift, but it ends there. Whatever comes from it, good or bad, comes from me.

I believe there is a God, I believe there are many Gods. My God is not the only one to believe in. I believe there is definitely a higher power. I believe in all of the angels and saints, and I believe that my loved ones are in a heaven where they are together and looking down on us, guiding us just as much as any God in the heavens. I believe that this world, this universe, is too big for there not to be more than one God. One of the problems I have with Catholics is that many of them, including people in my own life,  walk around like their religion is the only one that matters and if you don’t believe what they believe then you are less than them. That is some major bullshit. It infuriates me at Christmas time when I see all of these Catholics on social media with their memes about saying Merry Christmas and how mad they get when they think people are telling them they can’t say it, and how they don’t care, they’re going to say it anyway. It pisses me off because what they’re really saying is that they don’t care about your religion or your holiday, only Christmas matters. For me, I find it so disrespectful to disregard other faiths, so I am of the ‘Happy Holidays’ greeting. Unless I know for sure what your religion is, I will just wish for you to enjoy your holiday, whatever it may be. That doesn’t make me a bad Catholic, that makes me a decent human being. Thinking your religion is better than someone else’s only adds to the toxicity in this world and I want no part of that.

I believe in many things. I believe we all have a guardian angel helping us walk our path. I believe in fate and that some things are just meant to be and I have faith in believing that, whether or not I’m ever proven right. I pray when I feel an absolute need to but I pray to my angels. I pray to my Godmother, to my father-in-law and most recently to my Grandmother. I believe in love, I believe in my family, I believe in miracles and I don’t feel the need to say for sure where those miracles come from. My daughter is a miracle and I can’t look at her and not believe in a higher power at work. When a doctor says that she has no idea how I ever got pregnant I put my faith in all my angels working together to help create my daughter, who was born with a birthmark on the back of her head that a NICU nurse referred to as an angel’s kiss, and I know that was my father-in-law, I believe it was him. And my daughter is kind and caring and has a beautiful soul. She is love and I believe in her. I believe in the beautiful way my niece dances on stage and takes my breath away. I believe in the genius, and the curiosity and the wonder that is my nephew. I believe in the love that I see in my parents and I believe in the values they instilled in me about family that has nothing to do with religion. I believe in my husband, and in my marriage and everything we have been through, good and bad, to get to this place we’re at now. I believe in my daughter’s laugh and her smile, in my sister’s kind heart. I believe these are the things that make my world better. Above everything I believe in love. Love has made me laugh, it has made me cry, it has made me feel everything I have ever felt. Love makes me who I am, love makes me do the things I do. Love is amazing, love is painful, love is gentle, love is fierce. Love is the only thing that matters. Getting it is great, but giving it out to the world is amazing, it’s what we’re here for. I believe in God, my God, the one I envision for myself. And He is not found in a church, He is everywhere I look, in every person in my life. Am I a good Catholic? Probably not, but that’s ok because I believe I’m a good person and that’s the most important thing I can be.

If there was one thing I would want for you it’s for you to not be like me. I would never want you to look at me and strive to be that when you’re older. Sure, you can have my attitude, I think you’ve had that since the day you were born, and you can have my toughness and good heart, which I like to believe I have, but don’t live your life the way I did and don’t just settle for being someone you don’t absolutely love to be.

You have to love yourself. Love who you are. You don’t have to love everything about yourself but that’s normally things on the outside. You have to love who you are on the inside. You have to be happy with the kind of person you are and you have to know that it’s ok to make yourself happy first before you make anyone else happy. It’s ok to be selfish that way as long as you’re not too selfish and as long as you don’t hurt someone else in the process.

Do what you want with your life. I don’t care if your life goal is to be a bartender, or a garbage woman, or the president. I just want you to be happy with yourself and the choices you make. I will never push you to be someone you don’t want to be. I want you to try different things because that’s the only way to know what you like and don’t like, but if you don’t like something then you don’t have to do it, or eat it, or use it, or whatever. You’ll try 100 things before you find the one thing that makes your soul come alive, that makes your heart skip a beat. Don’t go through life never knowing what that is.

Don’t live a life where you regret so many things that you didn’t do. Don’t be a 43-year-old woman watching TV and seeing all of the possibilities she never pursued. Don’t just watch other people doing things, go out and do them yourself. Don’t read about things or see them on TV or in a movie to get a sense of what it’s like to do them. Get up, go out and try all of those things. Don’t wonder about everything, experience it yourself. You don’t want to live a life wondering what you could have become, wondering about all of the things you could have done. I feel like I do that a lot and it really sucks. It sucks to live a life of ‘what ifs’. It sucks to say to yourself every day ‘if only I did…’. Don’t ever think it’s too late to make changes in your life because every day is a new beginning. Do whatever you can not to get to a point in your life where you look back and see nothing.

You’re going to learn that life is too short to be unhappy for too long. There’s going to be sadness in your life and unfortunately you will feel pain more than once. But don’t let that ruin any happiness you are able to feel. Don’t hold onto any hurt that you feel because it will cripple you and suffocate you and I would never want you to live like that.

You have to grab life with both hands. Set your sights on what you want and don’t stop moving forward until you get everything your heart desires. Don’t let other people discourage you, put you down or spit on your dreams. Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re not good enough or that you’ll never get what you want. Those people are just pissed off because they didn’t have the balls to go after what they wanted in their own life so they try to make others as miserable as they are and bring people down. Don’t ever let anyone do that to you. Don’t let anyone ever take any of your happiness away from you, not even me or your father. No one in this entire world has the right to take away or ruin your happiness. Not everyone gets what they want, and unfortunately some people never find true happiness. So whenever and wherever you find it, grab it and don’t let it go.

Dream big baby…as big as your heart and mind can dream. Reach for the highest star and never give up until you have it in your hands. You can do anything. You’ve been proving me right about that since the day you were born, and I don’t think you’re ever going to stop.