My mother always used to say I was nothing like her, which I wasn't. While she was funny I was serious, she was passive while I was aggressive, I matched her lightness with my dark and while she was could simply let go of the experiences that wounded her I clung to injustices of my past like talismans. But being my mother, she had a unique ability to transform my less attractive traits into strengths, her belief in them making them true and now that she's gone and there's nobody to transform my rage into passion or my fear into strength. I don't have her mistakes to learn from or her eyes to see myself through and life has become something of an unknown path without a map, and it's tough navigate.

Socks with sandals with an evening dress in the middle of the day. I was a pretty stylish kid, I know.

But for every new year that I am a motherless daughter, I see how much stronger I have become without having her legs to hide behind when life gets tough, and I'm made aware of all of the ways I hope I can be just like my Mom. I hope I can be as warm and I hope I can be as good a friend. I hope I can obscure the things I'm afraid of so that my daughter won't inherit them from me and I hope that she can come to me with all her great burdens in life and rave at me until they are gone. I hope that when she hates me, and when she resolves that she'd rather be anything in the world than anything like me that I won't take it personally and know that growing up always involves growing away. And I hope that when I do eventually leave her here without me, that she will have made enough of her own life independent of me, that it won't be the end of her world, even if it's close.