The Mask

My first publication (which follows here) was about survival, about trying to stand when the ground had collapsed beneath me. I chronicled my first year of loss as the seasons changed, and I experienced all the events of that year without Ryan. This reflection is about learning to plant seeds in that broken ground. Ten years later, grief remains my constant companion, but it has also become fertile soil from which new meaning, new relationships, and new purpose continue to grow. Ryan's influence on my life is not relegated to memory; it's active in every choice I make to live more intentionally, love more deeply, and serve more generously. When I speak to other grieving parents, when I take professional risks I might once have avoided, when I choose vulnerability over self-protection, I feel him urging me forward. His legacy lives not in my sorrow, but in my willingness to let that sorrow teach me how to be more fully alive. Grief is my constant companion, always walking beside me. Some days, it whispers. Other days, it roars. But it is always there, reminding me of the depth of love I carry. I've learned that healing does not mean forgetting. Healing means remembering differently: less with agony, more with reverence. It means allowing joy back in without guilt. It means carrying both sorrow and gratitude in the same breath.