A personal reflection on empty nesting, the changing relationships we have with our grown children, and how losing my own mother helped me understand motherhood from both sides. Sometimes our children aren't forgetting us. They're simply living the lives we raised them to live.

Being a mother and grandmother changes as our children grow older and build lives of their own. We learn to respect their independence, adjust our expectations, and sometimes accept that we won't be as involved as we'd like.

A recent soccer tournament with my grandsons reminded me how precious our time together really is. Between welcoming a new granddaughter, navigating family relationships, and sharing a heartfelt conversation about missing Grandpa, I'm learning that love also means knowing when to step back and appreciating every opportunity to be present.

The last time I had my hair colored was May 31, 2025. My mother passed away the very next day.

More than a year later, I finally returned to the salon, and it occurred to me just how much life had happened between those two appointments.

I've lost people I loved, watched relationships change, welcomed a new granddaughter, and met new people along the way. Through it all, I've continued working, building Eternal Marigold, and reflecting on the life I've lived and the years still ahead.

It's interesting how something as ordinary as getting your hair done can remind you of just how much has changed.

And perhaps how much you've changed, too.

Tribute to the Chanthaboune Family

Life changes through loss, relationships, and choices we make for ourselves. Drawing on the Five Remembrances and my own return to a fuller social life, I reflect on carrying sadness alongside joy, respecting our time, and making new memories. There is still so much life to live.

Grief does more than teach us how to live with loss. It can also reveal who reaches for us, who remains present, and who quietly lets the distance remain. Sometimes, in losing one person, we begin to see our other relationships more clearly.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad.

My protector, my strength, my hero.

One of the most emotionally complex transitions in a mother-daughter relationship often begins when the daughter becomes a mother herself.

What once existed as parent and child slowly becomes mother and mother - two women carrying different experiences, parenting styles, fears, and emotional histories.

Disagreements about food, routines, discipline, emotional expression, or independence are often about more than parenting alone. Beneath them are deeper emotional questions about trust, identity, control, and the desire to break or preserve generational patterns.

Many daughters begin raising their children in ways they wish they themselves had experienced.
Many grandmothers struggle to understand those differences without feeling rejected.

And somewhere between love, protection, survival, and change, emotional friction can quietly emerge across generations.

Not because love is absent,
but because motherhood often brings inherited emotional patterns to the surface all over again.

Breaking generational cycles does not happen in one conversation, one apology, or one moment of awareness.

It happens slowly - through softer reactions, deeper listening, more laughter, safer conversations, and the decision to love without making fear the loudest voice in the room.

Sometimes healing begins the moment a mother decides:
“My daughter will inherit more warmth than tension from me.”

A New Moon Reflection:

Some days don’t feel like beginnings.

They feel like pauses.
Like something has gone quiet… without explanation.

There is a kind of self-love that isn’t loud,

isn’t boastful,

isn’t about mirrors or perfection.

It’s the moment you sit with yourself — truly sit —

and realize you feel something warm rising in your chest.

A gentle recognition…

The idea of samsara was never meant to live only in ancient texts.

It describes something many of us recognize instinctively —

the feeling of moving through life on repeat.