by Jennifer Chauhan
This past Mother’s Day was my fifteenth without my mom. She passed away after a short battle with metastatic lung cancer in 2007, leaving me not only without a mom but also without my best friend. I was 38 with small children (6, 4, and 2) and in a marriage that was beginning to unravel. At the time, I was convinced I couldn’t survive. Every day felt unsurmountable as I was swimming in grief—floating and then sinking, gasping for air. I was also dealing with heightened anxiety as I cared for my terminally ill father, who died shortly after my mom, and for the first time I experienced panic attacks that erupted at random—in a supermarket aisle, at a dinner out with girlfriends, in the shower.