The sweet things in life that happen to me are, of course, so very sweet. But I can’t help but feel a pang of sadness when I’m celebrating something exciting. This morning I paid off my student loan and all I want to do is call my mom and tell her I’m picking her up and taking her out for a pedi and lunch. She’d probably push her luck and ask me to buy her a pressie, which I would, and it would be the best afternoon I’ve had in a very, very long time. 
I can’t believe in 4 short days it will be 9 months without her here. I’m tired and so very pregnant and I would do almost anything to have one conversation with my girl. To hear her laugh. To look at a picture of her and not feel a tornado of emotions as to why I have so many framed pictures of her all over my house. To ask her which color I should paint my master bedroom and take her to Marshall’s to pick out curtains. It’s certainly gotten more bearable on the day to day. I can breathe without it hurting. The heavy cloak of sadness has been lighter, and that feels nice. I can smile at our memories. I can laugh with my husband without feeling sad. LOTS has changed and lots I don’t talk about because it’s just too painful and too private. But in this stage of my grief I finally have found what I’m comfortable with. That’s my relationships with my husband and son. My sister. My brother. The girls at work don’t even know how much they keep me up. My mother in law has been a true blessing. Her heart is gold. My best girlfriends. For being exactly who they promised they would be and for always picking up the phone or answering novel texts when I just don’t know who I am. For talking me off the ledge, and helping me with day to day decisions that once were so easy for me. In these girls I have found little pieces of my mother. Do you have any idea how important that is? These people have taken big breaths out of their own lives and breathed life back into me through loving me, listening, and just being present. Now my broken heart is sewn back together with these magical golden threads that have truly become a part of this new version of me. I can’t help but think about how hard the one year anniversary of my mother’s leaving me earthside will be. Mixed in with lack of sleep and post pardom, I can’t help but be a little worried (read terrified) but because of the people who love me and check on me, and squeeze me extra hard on the days where I’m a mess – I can do it, and I’ll move through it even if at a snail’s pace. If for nothing and nobody else but all of them. Soon I’ll become a mother of two, and as happy as that is and what a miraculous gift I am being given, I can’t help but feel a little selfish in the fact that my mom won’t be there this time. In the room. Coaching me, calming Dan. Holding our baby for the first time. It kills me actually. Downright breaks my heart. But I know she’s here. She’s in almost every dream I have lately, and even my cooking has improved over the last 9 months, so there’s that to all be thankful for 🙂 

My Mama. As we approach another milestone in the wake of your loss, please know how much I still need you. And how much I love you still. I thank you for answering me, and somehow still showing up. And I hope every day I make you proud. I hope I make you smile. Actually, I know I do 💗 

As I reflect on yet another roller coaster of a day, I have to say I miss when times were simpler. When I was 22 and my sister was 12, yet I wanted her on my team whenever we played a board game with pop culture trivia. Can’t quite even remember now without the help of google what the games were even called, but they had a DVD that went along with them, there were pizza rolls in the oven and I was drinking with my family on a Friday night. At one point I had Saturday’s off and if any of my friends called on a weekend morning, my dad would tell them “breezy’s still snoozin” and somehow mix up one of my friends names with a child from his own past. My mom would be the life of the party, and my brother would be coming home well after the games were put away and I would listen to him tell his tales of the night to my mom, his fellow night owl and partner in story-time crime. Times like these were the cornerstone of my growing up, and my favorite memories to look back on. They sneak up welcomed and unexpectedly on nights like tonight. My family truly is the makeup of who I am. In hard times and when it’s easy, they’re always there somehow. 
Please say a prayer for the most important woman I know. She needs some extra love and strength and some really good vibes 🙏🏼

life begins to make more sense when you take the picture that was perfectly painted for you and rip it to shreds. only then do you have the freedom to place the pieces the way you choose and not the way they were chosen for you. this is what it’s really supposed to feel like. the biggest part of putting this picture together is not only is it yours to look at every day and live with every year and sleep with every night, but you come to realize it’s not how you fit into this picture, but how this picture fits around you. people places and things in this picture will change, some will weather the storms, some will leave when it’s sunny and come in when it’s pouring. pay attention to both. very few things will stay the same, while the things that don’t change gain more momentum and take up a real presence in your world. a little effort goes a long way and perception is reality. match my effort and appreciate my reality. respect my picture whether it looks like yours or not. 👑

Today it’s all a mess. My heart, my head, my house, my car. Today I feel like a depressed young mom who is holding a thousand different ends trying to find a way to make them all meet some way somehow. My heart feels heavy and broken up. The kind of broken where it’s hard to inhale a full breath and then the crying comes out easily and it almost is sad to me that I’m crying. I feel bad for me. Tomorrow is my mother’s birthday. She would have been 58 years old. Fifty. Eight. And today I can’t keep it together to save my life. I feel like the weight of the world is once again cemented on top of my shoulders and my body is underground. My head is just above the pavement and my neck is heavy with a pit of constant grief about to erupt into a fit of screaming cries. Some days I feel like I may actually have it together and then days like today come in like a goddamn freight train and I feel like I’m failing in every area of my life. Truth is, I really liked who I was before my mom died. I never wanted her to die. I never wanted this new set of issues and mental sadness and heart heaviness becoming a part of my every day reality. I feel like I haven’t been my greatest self in almost 9 months. I lost a baby in the last 12 months and then 3 short months later I lost my mom. I never had a chance to even come up for air before then my grandmother died and somehow, I still put two feet in front of the other most days, brush my teeth and go to work. Or be a mom. Or be a wife. Or how my role of sister and daughter was kind of starting to take a back seat as I came into my own as a mom and wife to my own new little family, suddenly reappeared and needed me, front and center, immediately. I always try to make people feel important or special. I’m always trying to make the best of a bad situation and almost always I can find my light at the end of any tunnel. And I know eventually I’ll be ok. And the only reason I’m sure of that is because I’m Rita’s daughter. The days I feel guilty for crying in front of Mav, I hurry upstairs and start to organize or clean in a mad dash to protect him from my sadness. I’m a firm believer in teaching that emotions are good ways to feel and express, but I’m kind of sick of explaining to him why I’m sad…. because he’s a BABY, and these are earth shattering tears that I’m crying when they come and I just don’t wanna put that on him. I don’t wanna put that on anyone. The aftershock of my mother being gone is exactly that. I feel it, I feel it like tremors under my feet and jolting up through my bones, into my heart like an arrow then slowly moving through my throat like hot suffocating tar, and finally up to my brain to somehow make sense of all these nasty unwelcome feelings. Which I never can. I still shake my head in disbelief every time I see a framed picture of her, or her funeral card on my visor in my car, or her urn on my front entry table. I feel it when I look in the mirror and there are sad circles under my eyes, and new gray hairs along my hairline, and a few lines in between my eyebrows I never noticed before. I feel it when my husband looks at me like I’m actually on the brink of being checked into 4 winds. I feel it sitting heavy in my heart at night when I say goodnight to a picture frame that holds my beloved mother’s picture in it. I feel it when I’m losing patience. I feel it when I wanna call my mom. I feel it when I say dead or die or death or gone or anything pertaining to the end of my mother’s existence. It doesn’t help I’m almost 7 months pregnant and my hormones make me acutely aware of how much I feel and somedays when I can’t explain how I feel I best explain it as feeling ….nothing. Or numb, I guess. And that’s concerning to me because it’s a scary way to feel. Some days it’s hard to make a decision. Sometimes it’s hard to explain that there’s a fire and a flood inside my brain. A messy jumbled up scary shitstorm of emotions that almost nobody understands. Almost nobody understands me. Some days it’s hard to describe what actual heartache feels like, but trust me, you can feel a broken heart just like a broken bone or a bad wound. It reminds you it’s there. Throbbing and hollow and hot and heavy. 

So today is the day before my mama’s birthday. And I’m hurting. And I just want to feel like I have a reason to be happy. And I know I do and how extraordinarily blessed I am for everything I do have. But I really did like who I used to be. And I hope somehow tomorrow is easier than today. Today is the build up of a day I see coming. My little sister and my dad are going to be up in the clouds flying to a place where they have wonderful memories with my mama. They’ll bring some of her her ashes and they’ll lay them to rest forever in one of her favorite places. As beautiful as that sounds I wish she was on that plane instead. It was this exact day last year they decided to cancel their trip to St. Kitt’s because she was ….off; and it was then, that we know now was the beginning of the end.
I’ll do many things tomorrow as I do every day to honor my mom. It feels weird to not be buying her a present every day for the last month to spoil her on her birthday. I wonder how I’ll feel tomorrow when I can’t even call my mom on her birthday. I’ll still sing to her and celebrate her and I’ll even make her favorite birthday dessert and eat every last bite of it. I’ll let Mav blow out her candles and he’ll sing with me. We’ll smile and maybe even laugh tomorrow but today it’s not that light. It’s not that easy. If you feel so inclined to help me celebrate my mom tomorrow, then say it to her, out loud. That you’re thinking of her and wishing her a happy birthday. If you can drink, have a captain and coke with your husband. Or your girlfriends. Buy a designer bag you’ve been loving and couldn’t find a reason (until now :))to splurge on yourself. Listen to one of her favorite songs. Go to the karaoke bar and sing for her. Eat the damn cake. And then eat another piece with extra whipped cream. Say her name. Light a candle for her. Put your slippers on and sit and laugh with your family. Watch law and order or honey boo boo, because that’s what she would be doing. Then at 10pm when your grown children are coming in for the night, go to the racino and spend every last dollar in your wallet on roulette and then text your family at 3am to tell them you just hit the jackpot. 

My mom, she lived. My God did that woman have a life and she lived the shit out of it. She lived it out loud, every day, until she took her last breath. Happy Birthday Eve in heaven my mama. I love you. I love you. I love you. And I fucking hate that you’re not here. 

Today is my grandpa’s birthday. I would tell you how old he would have been, but quite honestly I don’t remember. I’ve lost count. I know it’s the 15th birthday since he’s been gone but I’m not positive how old he was when he passed so, that’s that. Normally I would call my mom and ask her, so then I could write a sappy status about how he taught me how to eat tomatoes right off the vine out of his garden just beyond the patio in the backyard of Fairmont Terrace in West Orange New Jersey. And then I would go and pick up a tea from Dunkin and a bouquet of wild flowers for my mom since this day was always hard for her, but I can’t. And he’s laid to rest in NJ so there’s no visiting him and bringing him the flowers. So I’ll write instead. Today is heavier than usual. I’m missing my mom, a lot. I would do just about anything to be able to hear advice from her today. To ask her all the questions I haven’t been able to since last summer. To ask her if I’m on the right path. What does that even mean anyway? The right path? I feel like at any given time I’m on 22 different paths and I guess that’s the glory of being a woman and able to multi task, but I just want her blessing in my life. I know I’m a great mom and I know she is so proud of the mother I’m becoming every day, and the sweet, sassy little boy I’m raising with a killer sense of humor. I know she thinks I’m talented and have great success inside my love for doing hair; I was, after all, raised in a hair salon, so I know she’s happy with that choice. I know she applauds my efforts in trying to cook as wonderfully as she did, and smirks when she sees me trying daily to keep my husband happy. And when I clean I can almost hear her in my head saying “you’re such a half ass!” Because I hate cleaning and she knows I’m always shortcutting that shit… But all the other gray areas. Am I living and operating at my fullest potential? Am I really always following my heart? Should I put the Cadbury mini eggs down for God’s sake? She would definitely tell me “I thought you gave those up for lent?” And ya know what – I haven’t given anything up for lent. Because I’m still a little mad that I had to give up my mom. And vodka. Not that the two go hand in hand, even though they actually sort of do 🙂 but I’m pregnant and you catch my drift. Plus, Rita loved her some captain, or admiral nelson over vodka for that matter (insert dry heave noise here). So it just doesn’t seem fair this year. 
Ugh. I just miss her. And I’ve been on the verge of tears since I woke up because I just wanna hear her. Say something, anything, yell at me even!! Please. And tell me to come to her house and she’ll make my favorite dinner and give me an early birthday pressie. And that I’m the only one who can figure out if I’m in fact living up to be my greatest self. And she’d probably tell me to leave Mav with her, and go to Marshall’s and get a pedicure. Then she’d fill Mav with salami, pasta and lollipops (“they’re organic Bree! I ordered them on Amazon!”) and when I would come back Mav would be asleep and there would be rigatoni and sauce and the most delicious meat balls waiting on the stove for me. And even if none of my questions were answered, I felt better, and like the weight has been lifted, and like I was loved.
I still miss her love every day. That might be one of the more difficult things to explain. Imagine your mother. Imagine how much she loves you. Now, if you’re blessed enough to be a mother, think of how much you love your child. Your children. Now imagine the love of your mother with your own love as a mother in your mind. And imagine that love just ….gone. Wiped from all existence. I know she’s not “gone” spiritually, this I’m sure of. But the absence of feeling someone who loves me like my mother loves me is some days too much to bear. It wasn’t a break up that left me with many feelings and a lost love. It wasn’t someone whose heart I broke and had to deal with the repercussions. It is the constant burn of missing someone loving you. It’s the ache of wanting to start shopping for her birthday and doing something nice for the woman who gave me life. The woman I was lucky enough to call mom who was always celebrating my milestones as some of her favorite days on earth. Filling my special days with her love. Filling my worst days with her certain type of love. Always looking for a way to make me feel spoiled. And l o v e d. There is nothing like a mother’s love, I promise you. So if you’re lucky enough to still have a queen walking the earth and she happens to be your mom, go give her a hug. Take her out for a pedicure this week. Buy her some pretty flowers. Because she needs it. She needs you, and you sure as shit need her 👑👑👑👑👑

you can spend your life giving yourself away, little pieces of your heart and soul scattered all along the roads you travel, among the people you’ve known, inside the stories you tell, within the lessons you learn, in the tears you cry, with the smiles you share
and never feel a return…
but when you do, you will know, exactly then, that God has woven these people, these rare and special angels of the earth right there into your life to remind you that giving is always better than receiving and the glory of it all is always worth the wait. 

Happy Tuesday Y’all ☀️

I used to love walking into your room in the summer time when I lived at home. You had just put fresh new sheets on your bed, your skin was still damp from lathering up in your favorite lotion, your breath smelled like toothpaste, and your hair was tossed up in your towel until it finagled its way out of your hair during your sleep. You would lay in bed with a nighty on and wigwam socks and somehow look flawless at midnight on a warm weathered night. Windows always slightly cracked open at the bottom, room smelling like triple lanolin and roses with a touch of whatever vanilla musk you used to spritz around your vanity. I would come and sit on the side of your bed and talk to you and ask you why you watch the most disturbing shit before bed and before I knew it I was laying on the other side of your big cozy cool bed watching Dr. G the medical examiner with you until 2am. You were so smart. You were so fun. You were always so much different than my friends’ moms. So cool. When memories sneak up like this on me I can’t help but want to write them down and pray on all that is holy that wherever you are you know that when I’m laughing I know you’re laughing with me. Sometimes I can even hear you in my head. When I miss you I know you’re trying with all your might to hug me or tuck my hair behind my ear or scratch the top of my back between my shoulder blades like you always would. 
Today marks eight. Months. Eight long months since you’ve been gone. Since I’ve smelled your scent. Since I’ve heard your voice – live, and not over a video. Since I’ve touched you. Since I’ve been able to kiss your cheek and tell you I love you a hundred thousand times. I hope you know that some days it does feel easier in my heart to go on living without you. Until I actually think about how I haven’t cried as much and then a pang of guilt and of course, sadness. But it’s easier to remember the normal, happier times and not just the very bitter and gutting end. I still can’t believe it when I write things like “the end” pertaining to your existence, how sick my heart feels. But it is certainly not as heavy every day like it once was. I feel you with me in this house. I know you were here today with us outside when Mav said he smelled you. I know you’re smiling when I let Mav help me cook, probably while simultaneously hyperventilating that he’s so close to the stove. And oh this new baby boy. I know you’re holding him close to you right now. And as much as I wish you were physically here to help calm my heart when it gets all wild like it does, I couldn’t ask for you to be in a better place than already bonding with my baby to be. Next month is March. Your birthday month. Not mine, or even Mav’s. But yours. I promise to live out loud for you in the next few weeks. To make you proud and as always, to take no shit. To love my family, and to make sure my meatballs are airy. Ugh. I just miss you so much. I hope you always feel how much love is stuck here on earth in the wake of your departure. If I could shoot it up in a moon beam to you wherever you are I would. And I do. I love you my mama. The one and only queen ❤

Sometimes you just need the sun to shine so bright that it blinds your eyes and warms your bones. The type of weather that encourages you to open the windows and feel the warmth on your skin. The days that help lift the dead blanket that winter wears on you, and breath and soak in that vitamin damn d! 
Ahhhhh spring fever. My favorite old friend. I love when you come dancing in so unexpectedly. You are so welcomed. And so loved. Yesterday my spirits were lifted up right out of my body it seemed. Today I’m a little on the tired side because a trip to lowes, bj’s and fresh market followed by a full fledged summertime dinner to prepare was LIT. And by lit I mean exhausting 😅 
It’s days (and weeks – Thursday 62 degrees holler!) like this that make me feel weightless, and happy, and free to share my love with the world. To shine my light. I have not much to report or to say except that this past week has been one of huge growth for me. I’m so vulnerable in some cases but sometimes I unknowingly throw this cement guard up around my brain and my heart and I forget that the people closest to me are ALWAYS worth letting that guard down. Honestly, sometimes I wonder why I even have it up?! This past week o have decided that when it comes to the people I want to love me, and the people I love to love, that the almoghty key to success is to let communication rip wide open, let love fly out of your heart and into the people you so dearly love. Let those people surround you, and of course let the sunshine that reignited the love in your heart yesterday shine out like sunbeams itself. The barriers that will be broken and the ropes that will come untied will be jaw dropping to you. I promise if you find yourself worthy to give and receive love with zero conditions and zero expectations, love will become so great, that conversations will be easy, laughter will fill your home, and you will feel the heaviness almost immediately leave your chest. 

If you love someone, tell them. If they’re on a wayward path, lend an ear or a hand. Even if you don’t want to hear about what’s weighing someone else down, sometimes they need that from you. And what better way to help someone through the clouds then to pull them closer to the sun. Closer to you.

There is so much darkness in this world, and I myself have walked through it, some days I still do. But with the love of my husband, my amazing little boy, my father, sister and brother, I’m okay. And some days that’s the perfect way for me. 
Enjoy the vitamin d this week. Take Thursday off if you can, tell your hubby to, too and go love in the sunshine ☀️☀️☀️

When it comes to a personal loss so close to your heart, it’s often hard to look beyond your own selfish sadness. At the stroke of midnight, my baby sister turns 23 and I’m positive, for her, it will be one of her hardest days since my mom has passed on. A day that was once celebrated as a highlight of both their lives is now, for the first time, celebrated with a heavy heart. Know what’s crazy about all of this? I never thought about anyone’s sadness quite as much as I’ve thought of my own, until this week. When I realized my kid sister would have to endure her first hard day, alone. Thanksgiving and Christmas were hard, but we all were together in our sadness. Some sacred silent cross we were all carrying together. Tomorrow, and for the first full year after her birthday, Allie carries her cross alone. Except I won’t allow that to happen. We said it to each other in June of last year, that nobody walks alone. As bad as it is to have this shadow over some of our once happiest days, I have a strong feeling something wonderful will happen tomorrow. If even a subtle but solid sign from my mother to my sister, if even we don’t understand it or even see it right away, I know my mom. And I know she’ll do that for her baby.
Which brings me to this. 
To my Allie Pie on your 23rd birthday. I love you. And from now on, I’ll always set aside extra love for you, and try to spread it on extra thick on the days you’ll certainly feel the absence of our mother’s love. I know you hate when I’ve taken on the mother role in the past, but please understand how important it is for me to know you feel loved. You have grown, so painfully much in the last few years and although you don’t feel strong or beautiful all the time, you are truly the definition of grace. If I could take an ounce of the pain you’ve been through out of your heart and lift off the weight you carry, I would. In the blink of an eye us kids have had the carpet ripped from under us, and the world as we knew it crashed into pieces around us. I couldn’t be more proud to be a sister in this sibling group of three. Because of our bond we have seen beauty grow in ugly and scary spaces. We have picked up each other’s pieces and been so patient and kind to one another. We have seen sins we never thought would happen in our lifetime, and we come out together walking hand in hand. When one is down for the count, we all lay down for a while, and then stand back up together.
Allie. As the baby you have absolutely had it easy, a lot. But now in the face of sadness you’ve been forced to grow in ways you shouldn’t have had to, but you did, and you are more wonderful than ever before. You are beautiful on the inside and that beauty is always shining out of the dark brown eyes mom gave you. Your heart is gold plated. Your words are few but powerful. You understand me like nobody else on this earth can. You are always my diary. My absolute mirror. The beat of my heart. When mom brought you into this world she provided me with a friend for life. A sister soulmate, a goody girlfriend, a Paula. A pie. I hope today you can find it inside to be happy that you were raised by the best woman EVER. That she wanted you more than she wanted anything else in life. That she prayed for you, faithfully, for years before she even met you. Be happy because you’re beautiful, and kind, and hysterical, and got all of mom’s very best traits. 
I love you to the moon. I’ll always be right where you are.