Hey Oprah, Here’s My Master Class: Making Peace with Disease & Mourning

Living with a debilitating disease and memories of her mother’s suicide, a woman finds the courage to transform her personal pain into a platform to help others

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Recently, I happily celebrated my 42nd birthday, a day of beautiful memories made with my loving husband and close friends. Happy, genuinely happy, is the best way to describe the sentiment I floated in. Yet, all the while I felt a gnawing reminder to write about why this year in particular is significant to me. Turning 42 is one of those years that in the future I will probably want to be reminded of what I was thinking, how I was feeling, how I coped, and what helped me persevere.

Twenty-five years ago, a week before Christmas, at the for a school project, when my father unexpectedly came home early from work with his eldest sister to tell my younger brother and me that our mother had passed away.