What This Year Took and Gave Me

My mother died in March. Everything else that happened this year exists in the shadow of that fact.

We love to rank suffering. We love to throw around superlatives about pain. Somehow we equate pain to resilience. I split my head open at five. Had a boil the size of an egg under my armpit at eighteen. Childbirth at twenty-four. C-section at forty-one. I've built up pain tolerance. None of it prepared me for losing my mother. That absence operates on a different frequency entirely. Unbearable in the most literal sense—something you cannot bear and yet somehow continue carrying anyway.

I'm still here. Barely.

This year tried to demolish me from every angle. I became the caregiver for my blind brother. I switched my daughter to another school because of bullying. Food became a luxury. Impossible writing deadlines. Endless errands. And then on top of it all, watching my people face systematic persecution. Watching the news became unbearable. Every week brought fresh catastrophe, new reasons to feel defeated.

I'm still here.

Something strange happened amid the wreckage. The harder things got, the clearer my priorities became. My family surrounded me when grief threatened to swallow me whole. My work as a blogger gave me purpose when purpose is all I can offer. My friends showed up without being asked, building a support system so formidable it could genuinely take on the world.

I'm not interested in packaging this into some redemptive narrative about growth through suffering. My pain hasn't transformed into wisdom. My mother is still gone. That reality hits me sideways at random moments with devastating accuracy. Some days I function in spite of everything, not because I've transcended it.

I went back to Levelland this year. I took my family to West Texas and stood in the cotton fields that raised me. I was nine years old when I wrote my first poem on a Steno notebook and terrible handwriting in one of those fields. I had no idea that today I would still be writing. That girl is still here.

Something about that trip pieced me back together.

The year somehow balanced itself anyway. For every catastrophe that tried to flatten me, something else emerged to remind me why I'm still fighting. My career exploded even as personal tragedy unfolded. Opportunities materialized when I had zero bandwidth to pursue them. The people I chose proved their loyalty in ways that still surprise me.

I'm walking into 2026 with something I didn't expect to feel again: actual anticipation. I have delusional optimism. I have immeasurable gratitude. I've made a realistic assessment that I've survived the worst and emerged fundamentally altered but intact. Success feels inevitable now because I've already endured what should have destroyed me. Abundance isn't theoretical. It's a portal that I've crossed.

My family. My friends. My career. My home. My wealth. My health. These aren't bonuses. They're the infrastructure that made survival possible.

I'm becoming someone different. Better feels presumptuous. Harder feels accurate. More discerning about what deserves my energy. Less patient with performative relationships and hollow achievements. More protective of my time and deliberate about where I invest it.

This year took my mother. But it also gave me her last breath. It gave me a wealth of happy memories. It gave me gratitude. It gave me perspective. It gave me a mother that I get to brag about. That I get to write about.

I'm still here.

So here I am on the last day of this brutal, beautiful year. Everything still hurts, but pain is a mechanism of happiness. It's what fuels me. It'll take me to where I need to be. It'll make me who I'm supposed to become.

@Santitos

@salinasmariasantos

Copyright © 2025 Maria Santos Salinas for FRONTeras.