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When my children were born (especially that first one), I moved from one understanding of life and how its lived to another. My perspective shifted. I was the same person living a new reality. Let’s not get too sentimental, though. It wasn’t always a good reality (and it wasn’t always a bad one). Things were just permanently different. I could never fit into my old, non-mothering psyche again. And that was profound. So, despite the fact that people have been having babies for millennia and thousands upon thousands become new parents every single day, my personal experience was so intense and so overwhelming I truly believed I was blazing a new trail, navigating unchartered waters, awakening to a reality that—because I’d never experienced it before—was unique and special and somehow sacred. Yet it wasn’t any of those things. It was mundane.

Now, my mother has died (well four weeks ago now). And again I’m experiencing a shift, and again, it’s profound. I know I will never, ever fit into my old, non-motherless psyche again. It feels unique. It feels sacred. But I look around me and see that losing my mother is even more mundane, more common, than becoming a mother was. So many people don’t become parents, whether by choice or circumstance. But nobody makes it through this life without losing someone so important to them that their very foundation is rocked without that person living on this earth. I’ve been getting advice and love from so very many people who’ve had that experience, so why do I feel so special? Why do I wonder if strangers can see the loss of my mother on my face, in my movements?

This is life…birth, death, change. I’m not special for living it. But I have to believe, even in the darkness of this new reality, that I am lucky to be living it. Because changed or not, special or not, sacred or not, I’m still here.