The Queen Continues Her Reign

The Queen Continues Her Reign

In a few short months, it will be a year.

A year since I lost my mother.

There is something strange about that sentence because part of me feels like it happened yesterday, and another part of me feels like I have lived ten different lives since then.

People talk about the first year of grief as though reaching the end of it means you’ve crossed some invisible finish line. You survived the first birthday. The first holidays. The first Mother’s Day. The first ordinary Tuesday when you picked up your phone to tell her something and remembered, all over again, that you couldn’t.

Then the calendar circles back around.

And somehow you’re supposed to be better.

I’m not sure grief works like that.

I think grief just learns how to live beside you.

Before the Madness

There was a version of me before all of this.

I had Jaded Emporium. I was building my little business, making things, dreaming things up, changing my mind approximately seventeen times a day and generally creating whatever I felt like creating.

Then Mama got sick.

And my entire world shifted.

Watching someone you love become sick changes you. Losing them changes you again.

Somewhere in the middle of all of it, Her Royal Madness was born.

The name started with humor, because humor has always been one of the ways I survive things that aren’t particularly funny.

But the longer I’ve built this business, the more I realize how painfully accurate the name actually is.

There is a little madness in surviving something that breaks your heart and deciding to build something beautiful anyway.

I Am Still Grieving

I wish I could write the inspirational version of this story where I tell you that almost a year later, I have healed.

I haven’t.

I miss my mother.

Sometimes it’s loud.

Sometimes it’s a tiny ache underneath an otherwise perfectly good day.

Sometimes I can talk about her and laugh.

Sometimes something completely insignificant knocks the wind out of me.

And sometimes I’m busy packing orders, designing a new product, writing a book, working on some ridiculous idea I probably invented at 2:00 in the morning—and for a little while, I’m okay.

Then grief wanders back into the room.

That’s the thing nobody really tells you.

You can be devastated and excited about your future at the same time.

You can miss someone desperately and still laugh until your stomach hurts.

You can grieve and build.

You can hurt and succeed.

You can carry an absence while creating a life that is still very much worth living.

None of those things cancel the others out.

So I Kept Building

Her Royal Madness could have disappeared during the hardest year of my life.

There were certainly days when disappearing with it sounded easier.

Instead, I kept making things.

One product became another.

One idea turned into five.

Boxes became books. Books became collections. Collections became entirely new ideas.

Some worked.

Some absolutely did not.

Some probably should have been stopped by a responsible adult, but apparently I am the responsible adult now, which feels like a serious oversight.

But I kept going.

Not because I woke up every morning feeling fearless or motivated.

I kept going because creating gave all that restless energy somewhere to go.

If grief was going to take up space in my life, then creation was going to take up space too.

And slowly, this strange little kingdom kept growing.

The Queen Is Different Now

I am not the woman I was before my mother got sick.

For a while, I thought the goal was to find her again.

I don’t anymore.

She didn’t know what I know now.

She hadn’t survived what I’ve survived.

She hadn’t learned how quickly life can divide itself into before and after.

I can’t go backward and become her again.

So I’m building the woman who comes next.

She’s a little more tired.

A little less tolerant of nonsense.

Probably considerably more unhinged.

But she’s also braver.

She knows she can stand in the wreckage of something she never wanted to lose and still ask:

What can I build from here?

That question has changed everything.

Almost One Year Later

As the anniversary gets closer, I find myself thinking about Mama more.

Maybe that’s inevitable. Significant dates have a way of bringing grief closer to the surface again. There isn’t a neat timetable for mourning, and anniversaries can stir emotions we thought we’d gotten better at carrying. (American Psychological Association)

But I don’t think continuing forward means leaving her behind.

Maybe that’s one of the biggest things I’ve learned.

There is a difference between moving forward without someone and moving forward while carrying them with you.

Psychologists even have a name for this idea: a continuing bond—the relationship we maintain with someone we’ve lost as we integrate their memory into the life we’re still living. (APA Dictionary)

I like that.

Because Mama is woven into this story whether anyone looking at Her Royal Madness knows it or not.

She is part of the before.

She is part of the breaking.

And because of that, she is part of everything that came after.

Long Live the Madness

I don’t know what the next year will look like.

That’s both terrifying and exciting.

I know there will be more things I want to create. More books. More ridiculous ideas. More late nights when I suddenly decide I need to learn an entirely new skill because apparently peace and relaxation aren’t really my brand.

There will probably be mistakes.

There will absolutely be chaos.

And there will still be grief.

I’m finally beginning to understand that those things are allowed to exist together.

Her Royal Madness was never built by a perfectly polished queen sitting comfortably on her throne.

It was built in the middle of real life.

In hospital rooms and heartbreak.

In exhaustion.

In reinvention.

In laughter that came back when I wasn’t sure it would.

In boxes packed on ordinary afternoons when simply continuing was its own little victory.

Almost one year later, I still miss my mother.

I still wish this chapter had been written differently.

But I am still here.

Still dreaming.

Still creating.

Still building this strange, beautiful kingdom one idea at a time.

The crown may sit a little differently now.

The woman wearing it certainly does.

But the Queen continues her reign.

And perhaps that’s what Long Live the Madness has meant all along.

Not that life won’t break your heart.

Not that you won’t lose pieces of yourself along the way.

But that somehow, even after the unimaginable, you pick up the crown.

You straighten it.

And you build anyway.

Long live Mama.
Long live the Queen.
And long live the madness.