A Heartfelt Gift

The Sum of Grief is a gift to my mom, but it’s also a gift to myself. I wrote the book to process the year I turned the age my mom was when she died while reflecting on the previous 26 years of grieving her death. It healed me to put all of my experiences into words and travel to Ireland to fulfill a dream I shared with her and two other family matriarchs, and it connected me to her in ways I didn’t realize were possible so many years after her death. The idea for the book came after I decided I would live what felt like the last 9 months and 6 days of my life as beautifully and fully as possible. Like my mom’s last year of life, I opted to fulfill something on my bucket list, which was a riding holiday in Ireland that was rooted in a trip my mom had promised we would make together, along with my grandmother and great-aunt, but we were never able to do it. I’m the only one living of those four women. I dedicated 2025 to my mom, facing difficult feelings and moments with grit and love, and to myself. I’ve wanted to go on this trip for a long time, and I was determined it would happen in 2025. I wouldn’t let anything get in the way, as often was the case with big dreams for me. I had the idea to document the trip in a book, and then it expanded from there. Grief math was why I was so determined to ride in Ireland, and I let those two topics combine for a book that is a gift to my mom and me. Now that it’s finished, it truly feels like a gift.