A Gift for Mom! 🤍

It never gets easier or better, the heartache of losing you. It just IS. And with time it just is, a little more each day.

If not for God and family, I would not have survived. The initial shock of discovering you weren’t moving when I tried to wake you. Waiting what seemed like hours and hours on the herd of ambulances to arrive. Many times, when I hear an ambulance going by with sirens on, I still get goosebumps.

With Mother’s Day quickly approaching, I feel the familiar sting, deep inside my heart.

I feel this sting the most on your birthday, Mother’s Day, and the horrible day I lost you. It tends to hit me out of the blue at random times, too. It’s not controllable.

I have three other children as well, and I try my best to never let my sadness show through to them. I love each of my children so much, as I loved you. I strive to be a great mother for my kids to look up to. I also try to be a supportive wife, but that part is still a struggle as I have a tough time opening up about things.

RELATED: Mother’s Day is Forever Changed After the Loss of a Child

Losing a child, whether in the womb or outside of the womb, is a terrible tragedy. Words cannot explain itafter six years, I still don’t understand it myself. If you have ever experienced this tragedy, I pray for you as I have walked in those heavy shoes. Life will never be the same again, nor should it be.

Why did my precious baby have to be taken? He was healthy, sweet, and perfect. He touched so many lives in his small amount of time (nearly four months) on this earth. He even told my husband, then me, and my father “I love you.” On three different occasions, if not for each of us hearing it, we never would have believed it. I know he was sent here for a reason, and I believe that he knew it, too. As hard as it is, that does bring some peace. He was special.

What I have learned, however, is not to go asking why.

That is a never-ending game you won’t ever win. If you dwell on the hurt and tragic things, you will get bogged down and end up in a bad place. My son would not want that for me, I want to live for him and make him proud. Every time I see a rainbow, or a really bright star, I know my son is happily looking down on me from Heaven.

RELATED: His Last New Word Was “Yellow”

Each Mother’s Day that rolls around, I will think of you, as I often do. I cherish knowing my thoughts of you bring me joy and not always the pain. I still have some of your clothes, I ziplocked them up right away and they still smell exactly like you. I remember your sweet laugh and smile, and I imagine what you’d be like running around today.

This Mother’s Day, I choose to live with hope as I try to do every day.

Life is amazing, and you were a blessing, an amazing gift just for me and our family. I am forever thankful for the lessons you taught me, and the joy you brought me.

RELATED: To the Loss Mom on Mother’s Day

Nothing will ever replace youI’ll always hold you dear to my heart. Just because we can’t be together right now, doesn’t mean we will always be apart. Until we meet again my lovebug.

So God Made a Grandmother book by Leslie Means

If you liked this, you'll love our book, SO GOD MADE A GRANDMA

Order Now!

Anna Bruder

Anna Bruder is a happily married mother to three children. She runs a blog called Fitpire, and is a partner in a family business.

When I Look In the Mirror, I See My Mother

In: Grief
Woman with mother smiling in older photo

Recently, whenever I look in the mirror, I see a strong resemblance to my mother.  People always said I looked like her, but I never really saw it until now. I think it may be because you always think of your parents as being older than you are. At the age of 61, I am now only two years away from the age my mother was when she died. The only good thing about dying young is that everyone will remember you that way.  I have only known my mom as the vibrant, personable, and active woman she was. Well,...

Keep Reading

I Lost My Daughter on Mother’s Day: 3 Truths I’m Believing Today

In: Grief, Loss, Motherhood
Woman and young daughter smiling

Editor’s note: This post discusses child loss Child loss changes Mother’s Day. My 19-month-old, Julia, died suddenly on Mother’s Day in 2024. Three months later, her autopsy revealed she had B-cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (B-ALL, also known as SUDNIC). Julia died a week after we did an embryo transfer at an IVF clinic in an attempt to have a second child. We found out three days after Julia’s death that the embryo did not make it either. Six months later, we did another embryo transfer that succeeded, and I now have an 8-month-old daughter, Lucy Mei (“Mei Mei” means “little...

Keep Reading

I Miss Having Parents

In: Grief
Grown daughter posing between smiling parents

I have been living with the ache of loss for so long that I truly don’t remember what it feels like not to carry it. Sometimes it rests quietly beneath my ribs, dormant and almost polite. Other times it rises without warning—on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon, in the middle of a coffee line—and cuts straight through me. Today, it was a song. I was waiting for my coffee when “Pictures of You” by The Cure drifted through the café speakers. I hadn’t heard it in 20 years. In my twenties, it meant heartbreak—young love unraveling, relationships ending before they were...

Keep Reading

What No One Tells You about Losing a Sibling

In: Grief

Nobody tells you that when you lose a sibling, your entire childhood flashes before your eyes. There’s no better witness to what you experienced growing up than that one person who was standing nearby for all of it. And when they’re gone, a part of that childhood and a part of that story goes with them, because it was only ever known between the two of you. There’s no last chance to say, “Remember when?” or to laugh about the things that made you laugh to tears together, a million times at the kitchen table. There’s no last conversation about...

Keep Reading

Grief Didn’t Break Me, It Rearranged Me

In: Grief
Sad woman looking off to the side

I survived losing my father after his long, grueling battle with cancer. It was one of the most difficult seasons of my life. I had a front row seat to watch cancer pick him apart piece by piece. When you lose a parent, you lose a part of yourself. They say time heals all wounds, but you never stop missing the good ones, and there are days when it feels like it just happened. By the grace of God, I survived, but I will always miss my father. Then, almost a decade later, I lost the career that helped me...

Keep Reading

I’m Learning To Be Soft and Strong

In: Grief
Woman sitting and crying on floor

During the weeks we cared for my grandmother in hospice, survival mode felt necessary. There were medications to track. Visitors to update. Logistics to manage. I remember sitting on the couch that served as my makeshift bed and listening to the rhythmic hissing and puffing of the oxygen machine one night. While my mom showered off the day, I texted my sister updates and sent my husband a quick message of love. I could still smell the lavender candle we had lit earlier in the day to mask medical scents. The house was quiet, but my mind wasn’t. I was...

Keep Reading

The Legacy Our Mothers Leave Is In the Details

In: Grief
Woman's hands holding beautifully wrapped small gift

It has been two months and nine days since my mom passed away. The first several weeks were spent on the details and logistics of planning her service. She passed in December, so once her beautiful service had passed, I busied myself with the preparations for Christmas. By mid-February, I finally began to process some feelings of grief on a deeper level. The quiet of this less-busy season is allowing the grief to soak in a bit more. Not the big things; not the obvious, grief-heavy reminders that stop me in my tracks. Instead, I’ve been noticing the small things....

Keep Reading

You Never Get Over Losing Your Mother

In: Grief
Woman and grown daughter smiling

It’s been 10 years since I last heard my mother’s voice. Ten years since I could pick up the phone and ask a question I already knew the answer to, just to hear her say it anyway. Ten years since someone loved me in that very specific, unconditional, occasionally annoying way that only a mother can. My mom died in 2015. And while “passed away” sounds softer, more polite, the truth is that she left. Suddenly. Permanently. With no forwarding address. She was gone. What I’ve learned in the decade since is not what I expected. I thought the biggest lesson...

Keep Reading

My Husband Is By My Side Through Every Storm

In: Grief, Marriage
Man with arm around woman's chair

The year 2025 began as a quiet storm. I was slipping into the fog of depression while navigating the early chaos of perimenopause, and some days simply getting out of bed felt impossible. My thoughts felt dark and heavy, my body unfamiliar, my energy nonexistent, and my moods uncontrollable. And yet, in the haze, there was one constant: my husband. He noticed the subtle shifts I barely acknowledged. The sighs, the quiet retreats into myself, the moments I almost broke. Instead of judgment or frustration, he offered presence. He held space for my struggle without trying to “fix” it, and...

Keep Reading

Losing My Mom Shaped Me As a Mother

In: Grief
Woman hugging young child, back view

Becoming a mother has a way of bringing old wounds back to the surface, even ones you believed had healed. I never imagined grief would surface so strongly in my motherhood journey. I thought it was something you carried silently, something that faded with time. But becoming a mother felt like my loss rising to its feet and saying, I’m still here There are moments when I reach for my phone to call my mom, only to be met with the reminder that I can’t. I want to ask her if what I’m feeling is normal, if the exhaustion softens,...

Keep Reading