Grief that never answered back, and the growth that came anyway

December 15: today marks another year without my mom.

She died in 2006, which means next year it’ll be 20 years, and even now, saying that out loud still feels unreal—like the words belong to someone else’s life, not mine. The date doesn’t just sit on a calendar. It lives in my body; it lingers in my presence every holiday season. It shows up in my chest before it ever reaches my thoughts. My breath gets shallow. My heart remembers before my mind does. Grief like this doesn’t fade. It embeds itself. It grows roots in places you don’t expect, and it resurfaces when you think you’re strong enough to carry it quietly, this time I’m carrying loudly.

When my mom died, she didn’t just leave behind her absence—she left behind questions that will never be answered. Why the addiction took such a strong hold. Whether she knew how deeply she was loved. Whether she ever wanted to be free as badly as I wanted her to be. Whether she knew how much of my life would be shaped by the way hers ended. There are questions I carried for years like open wounds. Questions that kept me awake at night. Questions that made me angry at God, at her, at myself. Questions that followed me into adulthood and whispered lies like you should have done more, you should have known, you should have saved her.

Grief has a cruel way of convincing children they were meant to be saviors.

For a long time, I believed healing meant closure. Answers. A moment where everything finally made sense. But that moment never came. And eventually, I had to face a harder truth: some losses don’t come with explanations—only survival.

What I’ve learned since then is this: acceptance isn’t the absence of pain. It’s the decision to stop letting pain define every breath you take. I still struggle. I still grieve the conversations we never had. The version of her that addiction buried. The mother I needed but never fully got to have. I grieve the fact that I had to grow up faster than my heart was ready for. I grieve the innocence that died alongside her. And I accept all of that.

But I’ve also grown in ways that only grief could teach me. I understand now that my mom was suffering long before she ever died. Her body was tired. Her mind was tired. Her spirit was tired. Addiction is not a moral failure—it’s a war inside the soul. And while her death left devastation in its wake, I can now say—without guilt—that I am relieved she is no longer hurting. That sentence used to feel forbidden. Like relief meant betrayal. Like peace meant forgetting. It doesn’t. It means you’re healing, it means your accepting, and it means you’re going to be okay. It means love matured.

I no longer carry the responsibility for what I couldn’t control. I no longer punish myself for surviving what she couldn’t escape. I’ve learned that I can honor her life without sacrificing my own emotional safety to the past. I carry her with me—but not the weight of her choices. I see her in the way I fight for sobriety. In the way I mother my children with intention, presence, and protection. In the way I refuse to let silence swallow pain in my home. Her story didn’t end with her death—it became a warning, a lesson, and a calling all at once.

If I could speak to her now, I wouldn’t demand answers. I wouldn’t ask why. I think I’d tell her that I finally understand what it means to forgive without reconciliation, to love without access, to grieve without drowning. I’d tell her that I’ve learned how to breathe around the hole she left.

Some days, that hole still aches. Some days, it still echoes. And today—this anniversary—it hurts more than usual. But it doesn’t own me anymore. I miss her. I grieve her. I accept her death. And I choose to live fully anyway. That is the growth grief gave me.

Closing Prayer: God, today I sit with the grief instead of running from it. Thank You for walking with me through loss that reshaped my life. Help me continue releasing the guilt, the unanswered questions, and the weight I was never meant to carry. Cover the parts of my heart that still ache with Your peace, and remind me that healing does not erase love—it redeems it.

Amen.

XOXO, The Healing Wildflower