One Year Without Her: Drawing a New Path

My daughter is napping. The house is still—for a moment. She’s been sick this week, and I’ve been doing what moms do: soothing, wiping, holding, researching, guessing. But in the quiet, I realize what I want more than anything is to call mymom. I want to ask her what herbs to steep. What Haitian remedy she swore by. I want to hear her voice walk me through it.

It’s been a year today since we buried her.
Some days I feel like I’m moving forward, imagining new dreams, making plans in my head. But when I look around, it feels like I’m standing still. And the grief—it comes in waves. Not the kind you can predict, but the kind that crash in when you’re trying to keep your child cool from a fever, or when the scent of thyme reminds you of her kitchen.

I think about her house—the place we cleaned out slowly, painfully. It was my home, then hers, then mine again through my daughter’s eyes. “Grandma’s house.” The peeling back of drawers, closets, memories. The sorting of someone’s life into “keep” and “let go.” It doesn’t feel natural. It still aches.

And buried inside all that grief is more grief.
The unspoken tensions. The relationship with my sister’s father—complicated, unresolved, layered. My mother held a lot silently. And in the end, it showed. I remember how hard it was for her to breathe in her final days. The weight she carried. The weight I carry now.

I’m writing again because I need somewhere to put it all.
The longing, the memory, the art, the hope.
I want to draw one page a day. Just one.
Not for perfection, not for output, not for anyone else—just to make a mark that says I’m here. I’m processing. I’m healing.

And I ask myself this often now:
How do I take care of me, so I can take care of the ones I love?
How do I release the tension in my jaw, in my shoulders, in my mind?
How do I give myself permission to rest, to cry, to not be okay—and still believe I’m doing enough?

This is the journey I’m on now.
Drawing a new path.
One year without her.
Still a mother. Still a daughter. Still an artist.
Still becoming.

And this weekend is Mother’s Day.
I almost forgot until I finished writing all this—maybe my body remembered before my mind did. I’ve found it hard to hear people speak harshly about their moms lately. I know everyone’s story is different. But no one gets a perfect instruction manual for motherhood. We’re all guessing. Some of us share what works. Some of us wing it with boldness and break down when no one’s watching.

And now that I’m a mom, I see it even more clearly:
One day of acknowledgment isn’t enough.
We deserve a week. A month.
We deserve to be seen when we’re holding it all together with one hand and soothing a child with the other.
And our mothers—mine especially—deserve to be remembered not just for what they did right or wrong, but for how they tried. For how they loved us in the only way they knew how.

To the ones mothering.
To the ones missing their mothers.
To the ones doing both:
I see you. I’m with you.

"What Do You Carry?"

Reflection for you to journal or draw from:

Think of someone you love who is no longer here. What part of them do you still carry in your day-to-day life—whether it’s a phrase they used, a recipe, a gesture, or a way of being?

Draw it. Write about it. Name it.

Let yourself feel what remembering brings up. There’s no right way to grieve. There’s only your way.