It’s the eve of the fifth complete year without my mother. I haven’t written because life has been really good and really busy and sometimes writing brings my inner most darkness to the surface.

What I really want to say is this – until you’ve lived your life without parents for 5 years, please don’t try to talk to me/be my friend/try to understand me. Life is hard and complex and add in being a motherless mother to three kids in a state that has done nothing but taken most of my maternal, constitutional and God given rights over the last 3 years, and you have yourself a bitch on a platter that is Brianna Lee Phillips. And honestly? I own that shit! Because partly it’s all very true and very real and something I’m learning I don’t have to hide or filter out anymore. (And if you don’t like that, I’m fine with it. I don’t like everyone I know either 🤣)

But instead, I’m gonna say this. It’s been 5 years since I sat by my mother’s bedside in a hospital. A cold dark sterile hospital room that smelled and sounded like death. Or dying. (If you know YK. And I’m SORRY for that)

I sat next to my husband holding his hand in an uncomfortable chair with an uncomfortable and entirely too hot of a blanket begging my mom to take her last breath and go be with Jesus. I begged her. And she waited until the next day. And on that next day; though I kind of expected her death to be coming, I only had 16 days to prepare, and how does anyone prepare for that?? Spoiler alert: you don’t. You never will. Don’t try.

I miss her more now than I did when she first left. I miss her more intensely, deeper, and with more intention, reasons and experiences.

Recently someone who had just lost her dad, asked me with the saddest, most curious and hopeful eyes if it ever gets better, and before she could beg me more with her eyes to say yes, I blurted no.

Because it hasn’t. Actually, I’ve found myself eating my feelings a little more these past few weeks. This has been far and away the hardest build up to any of the hard days I’ve had since I got the phone call from the hospital that fateful June day in 2016.

Here’s some things I’ve learned, and I’ll share with the hopes it can help someone navigate the intensity of grief if they ever get faced with something similar, but I truly wish you don’t.

Even when you explain to people who love you the most, how H A R D the hard days are; they will never understand. And it’s hard to give them grace.

98% of People stop asking and checking from about 1 month to 1 year of firsts, in. Your world stops, not theirs. Try not to take it personally. The people who care, stay. The people who are curious, don’t.

The isolation I feel still from being parentless is sometimes too much to try and convey in words. It’s truly an experience much like motherhood or jumping out of an airplane. You can’t understand it until you go through it. My therapist says I’m an orphan of sorts. Kinda sad right?

Being around big families and celebrating big things is always special in the moment, but when the reality sets in when the party is over, your pain still rips you wide open, and the sadness feels like it goes inward f o r e v e r.

There’s a tightness in your heart, and a furrow in your brow that truly never goes away.

Pain changes you.

Pain will make you lose friends.

Pain will help you make friends.

That same pain will open you up and make you want deeper more intimate connections with those people you so carefully add into your life now.

Pain can bring beautiful peace, but not right away. Stay the path, and listen more. You will learn you can be broken and healing all at once. Happy and sad. Carry your cross, and wear the crown.

I never knew I’d lose my mom, nor did I choose this – but I do choose how I sift through my grief on the especially hard days. And that can still be a challenge. Sometimes I cry for hours or days in a row. Sometimes I lash out on my husband. Sometimes I eat cookies and ice cream and brownies all in the same day. Some days I put my phone down and cancel any plans just to soak in every moment with my babies because they are the closest thing to heaven. And they all remind me of her, so I hold onto them. They are bliss personified.

I’m a changed woman. I speak up. I make people uncomfortable. I question everything. I spend hours reading and researching things that are important to me, because I never want to feel helpless again. I owe this all to her. She flipped the switch in me, not right when she left but in the year after her death – people and places, stars and dreams all aligned for me to become a higher version of myself. I walk around every day wishing for my mother, because I still needed her here. I still need her today, right now. I still need her when my kids are driving me nuts and I’m picking up the 7th pile of trash or wet clothes or rock collection off the steps thinking wow. Mothers really do do it ALL. And the fun fact is my kids won’t even know what goes into this gig until they have kids of their own.

(((PSA – if you can drop your kids off to your mama and spend the day knowing they’ll be loved up on without complaint? If your mom comes over and folds your laundry? If your mom knows you need a date night and shows up with your favorite wine in hand and says “BYE! Have fun! I won’t wait up!” If your mom lets you go to target and gives you a $50 to spend, on you not diapers? If you can drive to/ text or call your mom every day still???????? YOU ARE ONE OF THE LUCKY ONES 😭don’t take it for granted – I say this because my mom did all these things when I had just 1 baby, and I still didn’t understand how good I had it 😏)))

My mother, I have been without you now for 5 years. I’ve had two babies since you’ve been gone and so much has changed. I have screamed, I have cried, I have gone to therapy, I’ve boycotted therapy, I’ve felt the pain, I’ve numbed the pain, I’ve pushed the pain all the way down, and I’ve talked to the death about how much I love you, how much I miss you. How much I long for your touch, your conversation, your laugh. But more than anything – I’m coming to realize, that I will never meet someone, on God’s Green Earth that will ever even hold a candle to the way you loved.

Your love was loud. Unapologetic. Loyal. Unwavering, and more.

There isn’t much else to say except I miss her. In the small moments. In the lazy Sunday daydream. After the big celebrations. And inside every day. I miss her.

When you think of anniversaries in any other way – 5 is a big deal. This is no different. It’s packed a punch to my gut this past month, and though I love remembering her, I wish she was here to drink my sorrows away with me tonight. Except then, we wouldn’t have anything to be sorry about 💕

5 years an angel. Thank you for protecting us. I love you. I miss you. And, I still needed you 👑