Friday was my mother’s birthday. She would have been 82.

I’m still gutted and can’t breath properly when I think about her death.

But some days, I’m present to loving her more now than ever. Because I see her efforts as a mom, how she tried to raise these people who would be prepared for the world in certain ways, and always value, even protect one another as a tribe-band-siblings. And more and more, to her heart as a woman, her reach and passion for the world around her, in the absence of that trait, anywhere.

Then I’m gutted again, for the void of that. Seeing in the most profound way, how indispensable people truly are.

(A lesson I don’t think anyone truly gets, till a loved one who they are engaged with dies.)

But, I’ve been moving forward.

I moved out of New York. Went back to school. Been trying my hand at online dating off and on (the pits still).

Made my first short in years, in a directing class.

A simple assignment, 3 shots edited to sounds not from the shoot.

I felt like I had just gotten out of bed, pulled the cover back on my life.

Found the fire in the embers.