Not a day goes by that I don’t miss you momma.

This will be my 25th Christmas without my mom, she passed away just 3 weeks and 3 days before my 21st Birthday.  She was my mom, my protector, my mentor, my best friend, and I miss her dearly.

It’s easy for us to get caught up in our sorrow of loss, especially around the holidays, be it fresh or 25 years ago.  Loss is never an easy thing, and we never truly get over it, instead we learn to live with it and around it.  We push forward, keep moving, keep trying to find our new normal.

But what is normal?  I really don’t think there is such a thing, normal is subjective.  We just have to find our own balance within us, if we need to label that as normal, then ok, but just know normal is subject to change at any moment, so don’t get too attached to it. 🙂

Over the course of the last 25 years, I have lost my entire childhood family, the people that gathered at the table for Christmas dinner, and around the tree to open presents.  The ones that laughed and cried with me, my whole life.  Christmas can be a very emotional time for me.  Every year as the day grows closer, I feel myself longing to just have one more Christmas with them all,  to hear their laughter, see the joy on their faces and feel the warmth of their embrace as we celebrate such a special day.

This time of year, it seems that I hold their memories even closer.  I talk to them, feel them around me, and no, it will never be the same, not ever again, but there is no other choice but to live, and learn how to be happy again.  We have to find the people that love us and support us, and are put in your lives to open our hearts, to brighten our days, to hold us when we are at our worst and celebrate us when we are at our best.

I have had, and have some of those people in my life.  People I know were brought across my path, into my life, to help me feel loved, wanted, and needed, even when my childhood family can’t be there to do that for me anymore.  Sometimes, the really special people, be it a childhood friend,  or someone who I don’t even know that touches my heart with a kind gesture that I wasn’t expecting, they are the people handpicked by my lost loved ones, sent to me to be my earthly angels, to keep watch over me, and sent to do what they can no longer do for me anymore.

Loss can do a lot of things to us, make us bitter, angry, depressed, lonely, all the negative human emotions.  Loss is never a good thing, nor easy, but when we look around, we can really see the people that are in our lives, placed there to fill a need that someone we lost used to fill for us.

Seeing those people is not always easy to do, but we will find the similarities if we just allow ourselves, our hearts and souls to be open enough to really see it within them.  Then we will recognize, understand and feel that the ones we lost, are not lost at all, they are still there, watching over us, sending us the right people at the right times, still wrapping us in their love and warmth the best way they can.

When the weight of loss starts to creep in on us this Holiday season, we need to take a beat, look around, SEE the goodness we are surrounded by, see the people that have come into our lives since our loss and know that those people didn’t just stumble into our lives, they were sent to us, to challenge us, cry with us, root for and cheer us on.  Those people are little hugs from heaven, little reminders that our loved ones will never leave us totally alone, that they will always and forever be looking out for and loving us, until we meet again.

This may be my 25th Christmas without my momma, but it’s also my 25th Christmas of blessings she has sent me thru the years, gifts she continues to give me thru the people I love and the people that love me.  She will always and forever be my Secret Santa, sending me what and who I need, when I need them most.

I Love you Momma, Merry Christmas!