It’s been two years since I moved to Italy. 

Since then, the thought of starting something like this has occurred to me countless times. But I’ve always managed to push it down (“Who would care? Who would read it?”). I think you can relate that it’s so easy to let yourself get mired in the muck of life and suddenly wake up, years later, with all the days blurred together in a puddle and a fog. It’s also just as easy to get so caught up in the beauty and the dream your life has bloomed into, so much so that time flies away from you too fast.

But becoming a mom and losing a parent within the same year changes you…