Dylan’s 24th Birthday
I can’t tell you what it’s like to lose a child, but I can tell you what it’s like to lose mine.
Twenty four years ago this week, I was barely 18, young, unsure, and carrying the greatest gift I would ever receive. I didn’t know much about life yet, but I knew, without question, that becoming a mother was one of the biggest reasons I was put on this earth. I remember that feeling, the overwhelming love, the deep knowing that life as I had known it would never be the same.
And I was right.
What I didn’t know then, what I couldn’t have prepared for, was that love, that gift, could be taken just as suddenly as it was given. I didn’t know that one day, I would have to hold both the beauty and the brutality of motherhood in the same hands.
I have learned that death is a doorway, one that leads somewhere far beyond what we can understand. I learned so much the day he was born, but I understood life even more the day I lost him. To love so deeply and then lose that love in an instant is a transformation beyond words. Losing him felt just as abrupt as the moment he arrived, and yet, in the wreckage of that loss, something inside me expanded.
I made a choice to grieve in love.
The day I lost him, I became a different kind of mother. A better human. I gained more love, more compassion, more self-assurance, more hope, more passion, more life. I became more connected not just to him, but to the earth, to the unseen, to every soul who has ever known loss. I learned how to hold space for myself and for others in a way I never had before. Peaceful and calm, without fear.
The day I lost him, I became a greater gift to the world.
Every moment I spend inspiring, encouraging, creating, and loving… that’s him. The art I bring into this world, the beauty I share, the light I offer others; that is his gift, flowing through me.
And so, I choose to feel it all. The grief, the sadness, the pain. I let it move through me, shape me, remind me. Then, I turn it into something remarkable, pure magic and art. Something that lives on. Just like him.