It’s been 27 Mother’s Days without my mom.

That number feels impossible to me sometimes. Not because I can’t count the years, but because part of me still measures life in “before” and “after” her.

I was 19 when she died. I’m 46 now. Which means I have officially lived the majority of my life without a mom.

And honestly? I still don’t fully know what that means.

I don’t know what it’s like to have your mom through adulthood. I don’t know what it feels like to call her after a hard day, ask her how she handled marriage or motherhood, or watch her become a grandmother. I don’t know what it’s like to have someone who remembers every version of you still standing beside you while you become someone new.

Sometimes I try to imagine what life would have looked like if she were still here, and I can’t even picture it anymore. That realization carries its own kind of grief.

The truth is, I’ve lived an entire adult life without her.

I graduated from college without my mom.
I earned a master’s degree without my mom.
I moved halfway across the country without my mom.
I earned a PhD without my mom.
I got married without my mom.
I became a mother without my mom.
I moved across the country again, changed jobs and seasons and versions of myself more times than I can count — all without my mom.

And yet, I never want to diminish what those first 19 years meant.

Those years mattered deeply. They shaped me. They helped form the person I became. There are pieces of her woven into me that time and loss could never take away.

But Mother’s Day is complicated when grief has lasted longer than the relationship itself.

Some years, the day guts me.
Some years, it quietly passes by.
Some years, I barely notice the ache until something small catches me off guard.

I used to think that meant I was healing incorrectly — that maybe I should still cry every year if the loss mattered enough. But grief after nearly three decades doesn’t always announce itself loudly anymore. Sometimes it just exists quietly in the background of your life, like a familiar language your heart learned to speak.

Having Keaton changed Mother’s Day for me too.

For a long time, the day only represented who I had lost. But becoming a mother added another layer to it — gratitude, love, joy, fear, responsibility, healing. It didn’t erase the grief. It just made the day fuller. More complicated in both painful and beautiful ways.

And maybe that’s what I’m learning all these years later: complicated doesn’t mean broken.

It just means love existed here.
It still does.

Even after 27 Mother’s Days without her.