Julia Vandenoever

Still Breathing | Losing all family left me feeling alone and ungrounded. The year my mother died from cancer, I also lost my brother to a life of addiction. The people who knew me longest were suddenly gone. Our small family of three went to one marking the end of my family of origin.

Grief is a strange cocktail of emotions and it swallowed me. From cravings to wear all my mom’s handmade sweaters all at once in order to inhale her smell to hours of uncontrollable angry crying fits about words gone unsaid. I did not want to forget and I could not let go. I collected everything in her house I could from handwriting on scraps of paper, birthday cards, old perfume bottles to used tissues in pockets - the only pieces of my childhood left.

As I was swimming in grief, my own two children were growing up. Their gestures and experiences illuminated the fragility and duality of childhood - with every step of growth there is a loss. Observing their childhood transported me back to my own. I saw myself back in these moments with my mom and brother. I threaded together our two childhoods to preserve both theirs and mine. By recreating my memories, I put my family of origin back together again.

Still Breathing is a meditation on loss and remembering. Distilling the chaos was a healing process for me. I told my mom that she would not be forgotten. Still Breathing is my promise. www.juliavandenoever.com