Loss carves something permanent into you. Not only the missing — but how it recalibrates everything thereafter. At first, it is a long entrail that won’t heal. And, at some point later, you come to realize it has become this prism through which you view the world differently. I had to learn this early. Not because I wanted to, but because I had to. When you lose your mother the day after you’re born, survival is more than just breathing — it’s learning how to negotiate a world that began with an ending. What I’ve learned is that every emotion — the jagged frustration of pain, the surprising gust of joy, the stone-like heft of fear, the folded lead-weight heaviness of sadness, the hot ebb and flow of anger — they are all tools. Raw materials. Building blocks. You can allow them to ensnare you, or you can learn how to fashion them into something different. Something useful. Something that propels you forward, step after step after step. Adaptation is not merely about survival. It’s about receiving all that life serves you — the gorgeous and the horrific — and transmuting it into fuel for tomorrow. Not because it’s noble or brave, but because sometimes it’s the only way through. At least, that is what I had to learn. Not just to survive, but to thrive.