Today I’m going to share something deeply personal with you, a story I haven’t even told some of my closest family members yet.

You can choose to believe it or not, but I’m going to tell you this story exactly as it happened, and you can decide for yourself what was really going on.

A little backstory: I lost my mom to breast cancer when I was 18. After several years of feeling totally lost and self-destructive, I recovered from some serious challenges, got a great job, met my husband, and the rest is history. The person who lived my late teen and early 20’s years is not the same person who’s talking to you now, except that it is. That person and this person are both motherless, and that part of my identity is something that helps to make me who I am, for better or worse. It drives a lot of how I parent and how I live my life.

I had Tova Hannah on a Monday morning. The weeks leading up to her birth were pretty horrible for me; I was suffering from laryngitis, pink eye and the worst cold of my life, none of which I could take real medicine for. I was barely sleeping, and when I did, I would wake up every hour coughing, feeling like my throat was coated in razor blades.

Fun, right?

The Sunday morning before I was scheduled to go into the hospital, I woke up early in the morning around 4 am, frustrated at my inability to sleep, scared about the impending unknowns of having a second child and feeling generally miserable. I went downstairs to the couch, so as not to wake my husband. That was my routine every day; wake up early in the morning, head to the couch and hope to fall asleep for just one more precious hour.

Once on the couch, I immediately realized I needed to go to the bathroom, as most 39 week pregnant women do most of the time. I walked into the downstairs bathroom and as soon as I did, I heard a deafening crash, the sound of heavy glass shattering. This wasn’t the sound a lightbult makes when it breaks. It was the sound a window makes.

Naturally, my first thought was that someone was breaking in. It sounded like it was coming from the kitchen, so I ran out into the kitchen/living area (it’s one big open space) and that’s when I saw it, a heavy glass picture frame smashed into a million pieces on the floor.

And looking up at my from the rubble was a picture of me and my mom.

I hadn’t gone near that picture that morning. In fact, I don’t think I or anyone else has touched it since we moved into the house two years ago. It’s surrounded by other pictures in glass frames. None of them were smashed on the floor.

I immediately lost it. Sobbing hysterically, I ran upstairs and crawled back into bed where my very concerned husband was also thinking that there was a potential burglar in the house. I told him what happened, and as I was telling him, even I couldn’t believe it.

I went back downstairs to assess the damage, and there it was, the picture of us just staring at me, face-up in a mountain of stained glass. I started to pick up the pieces and put them in the trash. Glass was everywhere, stretching into the kitchen, into the living room, under furniture and beyond.

If you’ve ever lost someone incredibly close to you, then you know that no matter how they died or how much closure you have from the situation, little things have a way of opening old wounds. You never really stop missing that person, not completely. And though the acute pain goes away, a dull ache always remains, the ache of memories lost, opporunities you’ll never get to have, things you’ll never get to say.

Smiles your children will never get to share with their grandmother.

And the morning before I gave birth to Tova, my mom visited me and reminded me that I’m not alone in this. I guess I always knew I wasn’t; I have an incredible family, and they help and love me every day. But there’s nothing like the love and wisdom of a mother, and it’s not replaceable. I accepted that a long time ago. But I’ve got a lot going on. I’m already a mom to a 2 year old, I run a business, I have an amazing husband and great friends. So being a motherless mother isn’t something I think about on a regular basis. And that picture breaking was an incredible reminder to stop and appreciate where I am, how far I’ve come since she died, and how much I have to look forward to. She made me less afraid.

She may have opened some old wounds, but she gave me that reminder, and I’ll forever be grateful & glad she stopped by.