in every season, there are lessons to be learned if we're open to them. for me, grief has been a deeply sorrowful experience, but also a great teacher. below are some of the lessons i'm learning as i walk through it.

1) you can't take your belongings with you.

i sat there staring at my mom's possessions, which were piled neatly into a corner in my sister's spare room. there, all of her belongings sat, dusty and unused. i stared at her shoes as tears rolled down my cheek, i opened boxes to see what was left of her before opening her closet and touching her clothes. god, i miss her, i thought. i miss everything about her.

my A.D.D of a brain then went off on a tangent and i got thinking. obviously we need things; we need clothes, and shoes, and [insert whatever else you need here], but as i was reminded of this past week as i stood over my mom's belongings, you can't take your things with you when you die, so why not live accordingly now?

2) focus on experiences instead.

shortly after i snuck a peak into my mom's closet, i looked down on the ground and saw her silly raptors' hat. she loved hats; crazy, fun, and silly, hats, and this one fell right into that category.

memories started flooding in as i held that magical hat to my chest like baseball players hold theirs during the anthem; it was magical in the sense that it brought me right back to the ACC that night. it was her dream to see the raptors play after all, so my brother and i took her to see a game for her birthday, and she loved it. man, did she love it. but now all that was left was a memory; a painful, yet extremely comforting, memory.

create as many of those as you can, with as many people as you can.

3) as humans, we are constantly changing.

i feel like a different person ever since my mom died.

on a negative side, with both parents now gone, i feel lost and detached from the world, really angry, forgotten [especially yesterday being mother's day], deeply lonely, and misunderstood by my friends. on a positive side, i feel more aware and thankful, less determined to let small things bother me, and more determined to make my life count ... whatever that looks like. grief also has a way of making you re-evaluate your life, and causes you to search your way through the meaning of it. it also changes you. at least, it's changing me.