The Road to Health is Paved with Good Intentions

I began this post several different ways with a few different titles before settling on the one I did.  It's been two years since my mom died.  It sucks and it will continue to suck for the foreseeable future.  The time from Mother's Day to June 2 is particularly difficult. Being a mother without a mother on Mother's Day is tricky.  On the one hand, I want nothing to do with the holiday because it's just a reminder that I don't have a mom to celebrate.  I can hear people say, "You do have a mom and she's there with you in spirit."  While that's true and I do believe in the afterlife, it offers no consolation in the moment.  I don't want her there "in spirit"; I want her there in person so I can talk to her, laugh with her, hug her, and celebrate her.  Although I'd rather skip the entire day, I am a mother and have four beautiful children who want to talk to me, laugh with me, hug me, and celebrate me.  Trying to balance those em...

I'm from Utah.  I lived there, on and off, for most of my life.  Honestly, once we moved from my childhood home at 16, it stopped feeling like home.  True, I would claim it when people asked where I was from, but it wasn't "home" for me.  I visit Utah regularly because my immediate family and almost all of my extended family live there.  During the visits, I always come to the conclusion that I don't ever want to live there again because "fill in the blank" and am happy to leave.  It was so easy to find something about that state to hate that I'd use to cover my real emotions.  Therapy changed that. We've known about this trip for awhile.  My brother and his wife were celebrating a big milestone in their marriage; one that I absolutely would not miss.  As the trip drew closer, I found myself being very wishy-washy about when we should leave.  My kids would miss school and there were field trips and school activities that were making it...