Chelsea Ohlemiller Quotes

They don’t see the many little griefs that accumulated over the years in my ​relationship with my mother.

They don’t see the many little griefs that accumulated over the years in my ​relationship with my mother. Now the grief lingers in a way that makes it permanent.

I don’t want you to know how quickly I’ve run out of pictures I’d never seen before, or how devastating it is knowing there will never be another picture taken. I don’t want you to know how it feels to pick up the phone and dial her number out of habit, only to realize you’ll never again hear her voice on the other end. I don’t want you to understand because that would mean you’ve lived it too. I don’t want you to know how it feels to live with “what if,” “never again,” or “I wish I would have.” I don’t want you to know ​what it’s like to live with holes that nothing and no one can fill. I don’t want you to know what it feels like to visit a gravestone while trying to keep your heart from turning to stone. I don’t want you to know this pain. I don’t want you to understand this grief.

Most of the time it was because I had trouble identifying what I actually needed. It’s hard to ask for help when you don’t know what you need. Sometimes it was because I found it too difficult to be vulnerable about my grief and the harsh realities of the life I’d been left with. It was hard for me to verbalize that I was broken and messy and in desperate need of help and support.

all the onlookers see only strength. They don’t know the delicate differences between the two. You do.

And though we both shared the fault for our relationship, we loved each other until the end, each in our own way and with our own unique imprints. In all that we were, in all that we hoped we would be, she was mine and I was hers. And I miss her. I always will.

The only thing worse than having a mother whose attention you have to earn and who you have to work hard to understand is not having a mother at all.

It is no longer just a card. My mother’s death changed that oversimplification.

When you feel like you can’t survive the permanence of your mother’s absence, remind yourself of the permanence of her love and influence. It lessens the ache.

I’m broken and damaged. I’m confused and cloudy-headed. I’m angry and anxious.