Dear Mom,

A new year has begun. It’s now 2025. I sat down this week to write to you about my goals for this next year. In fact, I wrote around 1100 words about my desire to flourish in all aspects of my life. To improve and expand and grow. 

I then began to reflect on 2024 and started my letter over. Decided instead to remind you of the letter I wrote to you at the end of 2016. About my reflections of that year. It was the year I chose to move back to Chicago. Something I never thought I’d do. Something I only did to feel closer to you. Closer to the one person who wasn’t there. The person who meant the most to me had become tiny particles of ash floating in Lake Michigan. A great life force had become one with the Great Lake and it created unexpected challenges that year. But 2016 was also the year Scotland was born. The year I was filled with a joy I didn’t even know was possible.

And then I realized that there is something bigger I need to reflect on. Bigger than 2024. Bigger than 2016. 

So, I started my letter over again. And here it is…

It’s a new year. It’s also, in many ways, a new decade for me. 2025 will bring my fortieth year. Along with my last birthday of my thirties, 2024 also brought me my ten-year wedding anniversary as well as the ten-year anniversary of your death. I can’t look at 2024 without seeing 2014. They are long lost sisters sharing a trauma bond. Forever tethered in their mixed emotions. And it seems I struggle to look at the last decade without seeing the bad alongside the good. The grief with the happiness. The losses with the celebrations. So much like the ups and downs of 2016. The tough move as well as the beautiful birth. The terrible election as well as the Cubs winning the World Series. Two perspectives existing at the same time. 

When I think about the last decade, I think about all the growth I went through as a person. As a daughter. A wife. A friend. A mother. I think about the miles I traveled from the version of myself I was in my twenties. The broken yet full of life version of me. The “I’ll sleep when I die” version of me. The “she’s a good time” and “she’ll drink you under the table” and “she’s got the hook up” version of me. Full of excess and ready to dive head first into life even if that brought extreme risk.

My thirties represented my experimentation with adulthood. My starting a new career that was completely out of my comfort zone. My trying out a different city. My having kids. My living life as fully as I could, despite the bills and the responsibilities and the stress and the massive hole you left behind. My becoming sober and starting on a journey to strengthen my body as well as my mental health.

All of this. All of the growth and the joy as well as the hardships. The lessons learned and the experiences had. You missed it all. Mom, you missed my thirties. Entirely. 

As I reflect on the last decade, I can’t help but feel regretful that you missed my best years yet. That you missed my best self as she emerged out of the ebbs and flows of life. You’ll never know my kids and you’ll never know me at this current stage. It seems impossible to reflect on all I’ve accomplished without bringing attention to your absence. But I also don’t want to feel sad. I don’t want to drown in my despair. I don’t want to get consumed by those pesky what ifs and my wish that things could be different. I want to look forward to my future. I want to be excited for the years to come.

Considering that I grew so much as a person while carrying my loss, it makes sense that my grief has burrowed deep into my bones. But I also want to look forward without it. I want to get excited about the future without feeling sad that you won’t experience it with me. Is that even possible? Or must I learn to allow the heartbreak to flow through my veins without it diluting my oxygen? Can I hold space for my missing you while living my life to its fullest potential?

I must remind myself what I already know to be true. That it’s all tangled anyway. The good and the bad flow together as one. The last decade has ripples of sorrow because of your absence, but other than that, it was pretty fantastic. Sure, it was challenging, but such is life. There is rarely a day, let alone a year or decade, when everything is positive. When everything flows right and according to plan.

After you died, I was immediately thrown into the final stages of planning for my wedding. I then had the whiplash of celebrating my love and future with Jeremy while still feeling so overcome with grief. And I then squeezed in an intense training to become a Pilates Instructor and began a new career before moving back to Chicago while pregnant. I had a challenging birthing experience which brought a perfect baby into my life. And I will likely never be able to look at the best moments of my years without the reminder of all that went wrong, including that you missed it all. But I think that’s ok. If I can’t avoid the grief sneaking in, perhaps I need to make space for it. To recognize its pull on me and to allow it to be part of the process, not a separate entity.

Maybe I need to look to your new(ish) home as an example. Maybe looking at the windy waves of Lake Michigan can help me understand the ups and downs of life. A high tide. A strong current. A treacherous swell. All with a purpose. Not without hardship for those in the water, but still necessary. 

You know, I never thought about it until now, but you were never particularly fond of the water. You chose that spot because of the view you’d see from the lake. The view of the Chicago skyline. Of your city. I hope you’ve learned to love the water too. I hope you’ve learned to love the ebbs and flows. To ride the waves. Even the biggest, scariest waves can take you on a journey to a new place. Your waves, unfortunately, won’t get you anywhere other than Michigan, Wisconsin, and Indiana, but I guess it could be worse. You could be stuck in the dirt of Illinois.

This is what I want for my new year. I want to ride my waves. Allow myself to go along on the journey and accept all the ebbs and flows of my life. Treading water doesn’t make the water innately evil. Swimming against a current doesn’t mean the waves are out to get me. This next year, and this next decade, I will take the challenging moments, the loss and the roadblocks, and see them as they are, parts of life. My personal waves. And I will allow them to take me on a journey to a new place. To ride the waves just like you.

I love you, Mom.

Love,

Rachel