Inside The Gift of Goodbye: Highlights from Chapter 1, Venturing into the Unknown

Chapter one opens with some background about my upbringing, my mother’s influence on me, and lays the groundwork for my marriage and relationship with my children’s father. While our relationship was founded on passion and romance, over time the many demands of work, running a household, having and raising children, and life started to create a wedge between us. After six months of not making progress healing our wounds in marriage counseling and a subsequent separation, we reached the point of irreconcilable differences. I filed for divorce and started to take stock of the harsh reality of separating our lives, with two homes, and a four-year-old son and a two-year-old daughter.

“In the midst of changing almost everything I knew, from my marital status to the type of job I had, I was grateful to have some constants in life that enabled me to keep going.”

My parents graciously agreed to come live with me to help out, a visit with an open-ended time frame. And that was when I started to notice something was off with my mother. We survived the move to a new house and start of school for my children, largely due to the unconditional love and unwavering support from my parents.

“Even as I transitioned to making new memories in my own family– creating a new place called home, unpacking box by box…I grew more and more concerned about Mom.”