There are these moments, these pieces of time that can take hold of us. Still us into our bones. It is in these times if you are able to slow down long enough to witness them, you realize you are no longer who you once were, just seconds before. In the picture above my mother was alive and holding me on her lap. On the day that she died, age 12, I distinctly remember sitting on a chair outside of her hospital room knowing I was no longer somebody’s daughter but now nobody’s orphan. A word that had seemed so foreign to me just one day before. Life doesn’t always end up the way we think it should but there is a way we might be able to meet it head on with some sort of peace. Had I been overwhelmed with all the noises and sense pleasures that often overtake us, I might have not been able to become aware of my new role. It would have been even more painful (although that seems impossible) trying to stumble through life for years as a motherless daughter. That day I left the hospital an orphan. Not an easy role to fill but at least an honest representation of what I was. For some reason beyond my grasp still, I was gifted in her transition away from earth with the life changing moment of complete stillness and awareness of what was to come. I’m starting to realize now with age that this gift of stillness/awareness of what is to come is far more common then I once thought… It might make us vulnerable, or even sometime leave us with the realization that nothing is as it seems but I believe it to be evolution at her finest. A moment not stuck in the past or future. A moment that if acknowledged and given the space to exist will make our fun indulging times that much more extraordinary. #notsilentyet