“I am Woman. Hear me roar, in numbers to big to ignore...”

How very blessed I was to be eleven years old when Helen Reddy launched her emphasise anthem to the world. With her pageboy haircut, knitted vest, and high waisted, flared jeans, she was everything I aspired to be.

My name doesn’t matter. It’s not as if you’ll remember it anyway. My name could be Finn or Lotte. Kate, Marissa, Matthew, TJ, James, Victoria, Adam, Grace, Ashley, Claire. We are not mothers. We are not fathers. All we are are brothers and sisters. Siblings. We are the forgotten mourners and those left behind in the wake of a child dying from cancer. Our grief does not matter.

It was a good thing.

No, in fact, it was the best thing that could’ve happened.

I know that.

I was in an abusive relationship—eighteen years old—and the stick said positive.

I cut potatoes for my visit to Sunnybrook hospital. I’m making potato and leek soup. It is full of minerals and fits the food restriction list for those undergoing chemotherapy. I hope he likes it. I hope it brings nourishment and love.

My Facebook feed brings me an Orca carrying her dead baby, her tears spouting upwards, salting the already salty ocean. I am like that Orca, carrying my bundled grief, attached to my heaving chest, refusing to let go. The sudden loss of marriage, child, parent, even as I came back from the brink of death, has become my bundled grief. I clutch it, like that bundle of celebratory, baby shaped rice Japanese mothers handle with so much care, as it is supposed to hold the child’s future.

Every now and then, old memories appear when you least expect them.

Fastidious footsteps on the pavement leading to Painter Hall on the historic campus of Mississippi University for Women in Columbus, Mississippi. You’re late. As you take the brick steps and walk towards the door, your mind falls back to a time when Santa Clause was a real man who slid down chimneys with tons of gifts, and life was centered around nursery rhymes, coloring sheets, and recess.

There are great concrete buttresses at my back holding up a lantern of light in the church behind me. I’m sitting on concrete steps, staring at one resilient weed working its way through a crack. Little survivor. I come here for the huge sky: tall river-meets-sea light, gulls wheeling and screaming, silvering the air, and the smell of all those far-off places I’ve never been to, swept briskly up here by the winds off the huge river. Close your eyes, you could be anywhere. It’s magic.

Is grief supposed to feel so much like shame? Mine does. Telling my story seems dangerous. It is something I hold close to my chest; I hesitate to reveal even the smallest details unless I have to. To speak of loss and pain out loud makes me vulnerable. It shakes a carefully crafted persona. It could mean people will think less of me, people will not like me. It could mean I get fired from my job, because I am someone who can’t cope. It could mean I will be left, once again, utterly, unbearably alone. That is too high a price to pay.

I’m an editor for a Christian press. I have two degrees in religion, both with a focus in biblical/textual studies. Most of what I edit is Bible based, and I see a lot of my role as helping my theology-focused authors do good biblical interpretation.

Yesterday I just so happened to share a picture of my dad and me on Instagram. It's one of about six photos I have with him. This particular one was was taken on May 25, 1997 on the day of my First Communion. We sit in the front room of the house, the good room or Santa's room as it was called from time to time, because it was also the room where we kept the Christmas tree. My Dad loved Christmas, or so my Mom tells me.

He called me. Me. He picked up the phone and dialled my number. Not the favorite daughter who, admittedly, lives farther away, or the “son and hair” as he was known by his flowing locks in the ‘70s, who lives closer.

No. The bane of his life. The thorn in his side. Me.

Dear Past Me,

It’s been what seems like an eternity since I last thought of you. The memories of you terrify me to the point of disbelief. Perhaps, it’s because I’ve told myself it’s nonessential how our life started out, so why dwell on the past?

Dear 2016 Alissa,

To be fair, I didn’t think you’d come this far. I had no idea you would do such stupid things with twenty-three guys. Here is the gold medal for being a slut, a very good one.

June 10, 1993

Dear Girl:

I saw a version of you today. She’s about your age and looks a little like you except she’s skinny and you are a miserable pudge. I bet she’s been living the life you live although you have cut out all the drugs by now. That near arrest scared the fuck out of you so now you have winnowed all your bad habits down to getting drunk every day. This girl slammed her car, going forty, into another car because she was high.

Dear Past Me,

I hate to be the one to tell you this, but those aren’t orgasms. You’ll learn this years down the road when you finally get your medication cocktail right, and discover you’re deserving of pleasure. You have a lot of learning to do, and you’ll get there eventually. Trust me, things will start to feel a lot better soon, and you won’t have to fake it anymore, even if, in your heart of hearts, you feel like it’s sincere.

Dear Past Self,

I wish I could’ve told you how much it hurts to have your tonsils removed.

Not as much as your cholesteatoma, chicken pox, shingles, or having an IUD inserted, but it would’ve been nice to be prepared to throw up blood constantly for two days.

Dear Past Me,

The one sitting by an incubator in the NICU. I see you- I am you. Today was hard. A doctor with a brash attitude blindsided you in a room full of people. She told you to pull the plug- to abandon hope because even if your sick child does manage to pull through- the burden will be too great. Her words- not yours, not mine.

Dear Past Me,

It’s your first day of college sleeping under crisp new sheets in your bed in your dorm room. You’re listening to your roommates breathing softly in the dark, two complete strangers who have been randomly picked to become your best friends, the people whom you are to navigate through this scary change with. You’re questioning the first big decision your mom has not made for you: college.

Dear Past Me,

I’ve never written a Dear Past Me letter before. It never occurred to me. A Future Me letter makes more sense as I can store it away for you, me rather (Argh, confusing!) to read when you’re clearing out the cupboard, or that box under your desk where you put all the papers that have no proper place anywhere else in the house.

My hubby is stronger than me—I have no doubt about it—but he still likes to prove it to me. Now and then, he closes the lid of a jar tight, tight enough that I can’t open it again. In his defense, he is absent minded, but it still causes me a lot of stress.