Nine Years Without My Mom

Nine Years: A Journey Through Grief and Love

Nine years.

It has been nine years since the world shifted in a way I never agreed to. Nine years since I had to learn how to keep living without the person who made life make sense.

The Day Everything Changed

I still remember the day I lost her in sharp flashes that never dull. The phone call. The silence that followed. The way the air changed in my chest. People say time softens things. Maybe for some things. Not this. Grief doesn’t disappear. It becomes part of your body. It learns your rhythms. It moves with you.

My Everyday Person

My mom was not just a role in my life. She was my everyday person. We talked constantly. Morning check-ins. Midday updates. The tiny, useless, beautiful details that matter to no one else. She celebrated the small wins like they were miracles and held me steady when the bottom fell out. She told me the truth, even when I didn’t want to hear it, and loved me like nothing I did could shake that love.

When she died, everything kept going, as if someone pressed play on a movie I wasn’t ready to watch. The sun still came up. The bills still needed to be paid. People still laughed in grocery stores and picked the longest line. Life didn’t pause to let me catch up. I had to learn how to live inside a reality that didn’t include her voice on the other end of the phone.

A Different Kind of Motherhood

The last nine years have carried everything. I became a different kind of mother without her here. I made hard choices without her advice. I walked through heartbreak and rebuilding without her hugs. I learned to sit with my pain and still get up in the morning. I learned that missing someone this deeply doesn’t mean you are broken. It means you loved in a way that rewired you.

The Loud Days of Grief

There are days when the grief is quiet. It settles beside me like a shadow and lets me breathe. Then there are days like today. The anniversary days. The days when the missing is loud and specific. The days when I can hear her laugh in my head, and it knocks the wind out of me because I can’t make it real. On those days, I remind myself that pain is not proof of failure. It is proof of love.

No Clean Season to Grieve

I never got a clean season to grieve her. I went straight into taking care of what needed to be taken care of. I tried to be strong for everyone else. I tried to keep moving so I wouldn’t drown. And still, even without a perfect timeline, I feel her with me. I feel her when I cook dinner and the house smells like comfort. I feel her when my kids do something brave, and my eyes sting with that same pride she used to have for me. I feel her when I catch myself giving the kind of unconditional love she taught me by living it.

Strange Skills Learned

Nine years have taught me strange skills. I can cry in the car and still show up to work. I can tell a story about her and laugh until the ache sneaks up and I have to swallow hard. I can hold joy and grief in the same moment without needing to choose. I have learned how to keep a seat for her at the table in my heart and let life move around it.

Missing the Ordinary

I miss the ordinary things the most. I miss telling her about the small nonsense of my day. I miss the way she could tell something was off by the sound of my hello. I miss asking her the questions I still don’t have answers to. I miss the way she believed in me so effortlessly that it made me braver than I felt.

The Myth of Closure

People like to talk about closure. I don’t believe in that word for this. There is no closing a chapter when the person is written through every page of who you are. There is only opening your life to carry them forward. There is only making choices that would make them proud. There is only loving in a way that keeps their love alive.

Honoring Her Memory

Some years I mark this day with quiet. Some years I write. Some years I talk to her out loud in the kitchen while the coffee drips because it feels like church to me. Today, I am choosing to speak her name and tell the truth about what nine years really looks like. It looks like being okay and not okay in waves. It looks like living a full life with a permanent space carved out that will always belong to her. It looks like letting the parts of her that live in me lead the way.

Carrying Her Forward

I carry her in the way I mother. I carry her in the boundaries I hold and the tenderness I offer. I carry her when I stand up for myself and when I choose peace. I carry her when I rest and when I refuse to abandon myself. She is the spine in my strength and the softness in my love.

You Are Not Alone

If you are reading this and your person is gone too, I want you to hear me. You are not doing it wrong because you still cry years later. You are not weak because anniversaries split you open again. You are not behind in your healing because the missing hasn’t faded. Love like this does not evaporate. It roots itself deeper. It becomes the soil you grow from.

Acknowledging the Love

I don’t need anyone to tell me she is proud. I know it. I know it in the quiet moments when I choose compassion over chaos. I know it when I keep going, even when fear tries to take the wheel. I know it when I look at my kids and feel the exact brand of love she poured into me spilling out of me and covering them.

Love Beyond Time

Nine years is a long time for the world to keep spinning without her here. It is also proof that love is bigger than time. Every day I live in a way that honors her is another day she exists right here with me. Not in a past tense. Not as a memory I tiptoe around. As a presence that shapes me.

Celebrating Her Life

So today, I light a candle. We will eat dinner together to honor her. We might tell a story about her that makes us laugh. I will also let the tears come if they need to. I let the gratitude come too. Because I got to be her daughter. I got that kind of mother. Not everyone does. That is a gift I will spend the rest of my life protecting.

I love you, Mom. Thank you for every piece of me you built with your love. Thank you for the way you still show up in my life, in the timing I cannot explain, in the strength that keeps finding me. I will keep carrying you. I will keep living a life you would recognize as mine. I will keep choosing the kind of love you taught me. Always.

If you are missing someone today, consider doing one small thing they would have loved. Play their song. Wear their favorite color. Write them a letter and tuck it somewhere safe. Let the love move. That is how we keep them with us.

Nine years. And still, always, her.

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Why I Share Pieces of My Story

I don’t share this because I want pity. I share it because grief can be so isolating that you start to wonder if you’re the only one still carrying this much love and this much ache after all this time. You’re not. There is no timeline for missing someone who was your whole world. There is no “getting over it.” There is only learning how to live with it — and sometimes even letting it change you in ways that make you softer, stronger, and more alive.

If you’re walking through your own loss, please know that you are seen here. Your grief is valid. Your love is still alive. And you’re allowed to carry both.

With love, always,

Lindsay-Michele