Lilly Keller Bozeman Daily Chronicle

This year has been far from stellar for me.

Nearly five months ago, my mom died from cancer after a year and a day of fighting a disease that took everything from her. By the time I made the 2,000-mile journey from Montana to my home state of Vermont, her soul had already wandered off, leaving only an unresponsive shell that would never wake or say goodbye.

Since then, learning to live with that loss has been anything but easy. There have been bright spots scattered through the past year and a half of bad, worse and unbearable days, but mostly I’ve felt stuck, unsure how to move forward, unable to stop looking back.

It’s hard to move on when it feels like my life has been rewritten by loss, when I can’t shake the fear that illness or tragedy is alwa

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