The Layers of Loss

A reflection on grief and gratitude five years after my mother's death.

It’s been five years since my mother passed away. It was the night of January 27, 2020. It was eight days after my 30th birthday. She was only 60 years old.

I remember I was so stuck on our respective ages the months after she passed. I just turned her age when she gave birth me — and a short 30 years later, she died.

Her illness came suddenly, and her death came even quicker. On Thanksgiving Day 2019, my sister-in-law took her to the hospital because of stomach pain. The doctors found a tumor so large it was inoperable, untreatable. There was nothing they could do. Nothing we could do. Over the next seven weeks, she slowly slipped away from us. And just like that, it was over.

Grief has lived in me ever since, a constant presence that shifts and evolves. I’ve teetered between optimism and sadness, often bouncing between them like a pendulum. In those first couple of years, I clung to positivity like a lifeline. I convinced myself there were silver linings: her suffering was over, it was out of my control, life had to go on. I threw myself into distractions — work, unhealthy relationships, constant socializing. I avoided being alone at all costs. I tried so hard to find stability because I was so emotionally uprooted. My mother, the person who made everything in my life possible, was gone. I kept reaching for safety, for something to fill the void she left behind. But nothing worked.

It wasn’t until the last few months that my therapist really helped me identify that it was sadness that was buried deep behind layers of optimism. She helped me see what I couldn’t: the optimism I wore so proudly wasn’t strength. It was a shield. Beneath it was sadness, buried so deeply I didn’t even realize it was there. It was the root of my anger, my rage, my moments of dissociation. It explained why I lashed out in ways that felt uncontrollable, why heartbreak hit me so profoundly I doubted I’d make it through another day.

Through somatic work and a monumental trip to the Hoffman Process, I started to unlock what had been trapped inside me for so long. And every time I went deeper, the feeling I came back to was sadness. Not anger, not despair — just profound sadness. It took so much effort to uncover, to confront, but when I did, everything started to make sense. I began to see how my mother’s death, and the complexities of our 30-year relationship, play out in my day-to-day life. The sadness I carry isn’t just about losing her. It’s about the ways I still reach for her, the moments I wish for her guidance, and the times I feel her presence — or the aching silence when I don’t. But here’s the thing: this sadness is not a failure. It’s not something I need to push away or “move on” from. It’s a part of me now, and that’s okay.

I feel like I’ve lived a hundred lives since she died, each one shaped by the equal weight of joy and pain. There have been moments of numbness, when I felt like I was just going through the motions. There have been moments when my heart shattered into a million pieces. There have been moments of quiet joy that no one else could possibly understand. Sometimes it feels so deeply unfair that she is gone. Her death has changed me in ways I’m still trying to articulate.

I feel something different each year on her anniversary. One year I ignored it. One year I cried all day at work. One year I shopped. One year I was totally happy. This year, I woke up feeling heavy. This year, I am embracing the build up of a lot of pain in a few short weeks. As the day went on, I found myself in the silence of my own thoughts. I treated myself to a massage. I enjoyed a quiet dinner at home alone in peace. I had an hour phone call with my best friend. And now, as I finish writing this piece I started in December, I feel a bittersweet sense of clarity.

Five years ago at this exact moment was one of the darkest moments of my life. I’ll never forget it. The pain was sharp, raw, and suffocating. Five years later, I am finally understanding that my life has played out exactly as it should. The twists and unexpected turns, the heartbreaks and breakthroughs — they’ve all brought me here.

This brings me to one last thought an incredibly wise woman recently told me: “The deepest spiritual version of acceptance is gratitude.”

Acceptance is hard. It means coming to terms with what is, whether good or bad, without resistance or denial. But gratitude — that’s even harder. Gratitude invites us to shift our perspective from “Why is this happening to me?” to “This is happening for me.” And when we embrace that mindset, we start to see even the deepest pain as a teacher.

Gratitude doesn’t erase the sadness, but it transforms it. It allows us to hold the heartbreak and the hope, the loss and the love, all at once. It reminds us that life isn’t about avoiding pain — it’s about learning to live fully, even in the face of it.

And for that, I am grateful.

Love, Cat

---