#loss

#loss

Mum was kind and gentle in a way that felt so natural. She raised all five of us pretty much on her own after Dad passed away.

Losing her was like 'the heart being ripped out of the chest' of our entire family. Our mam played so many different roles in our lives. She was a wife, mother, sister, daughter, mother-in-law and grandmother. She was pretty cool at all of them.

Chris Price played for the Kansas City Royals in the late 1990s. But when the sisters reach for memories of their dad, he's often driving off on one of his custom Harley-Davidson motorcycles. Morgan remembers watching from the laundry room. Frankie is closer, in the garage.

"It was like quicksand," he said. His father came around the corner in time to see his arms poking up above the rim, a cartoon character in need of rescue. "I could easily have died."

Abraham Vazquez has this lusty, powerful, aching voice. This song is about loss, and you feel it with every inch of intensity that he's performing.

In the opening sequence, Laura encounters a paddleboarder clad entirely in black who turns a covered face silently in her direction as he passes by - death as an urban hobbyist.

There is a particular form of blindness that afflicts the fortunate-a blindness to the quiet miracles of ordinary existence. We walk through our days surrounded by what a patient once called "unexperienced happiness," moving through gifts we no longer recognize as gifts, breathing blessings we've forgotten are blessings. It often takes a brush with loss to restore our sight. This is a meditation that can perhaps grant us more mindfulness than hundreds of seminars. It's about the obvious that we sometimes simply no longer see.

For as long as I can remember, I've been the kind of person who plans everything. My calendar was color-coded, my to-do lists perfectly alphabetized, and I could tell you what I'd be doing six months from now almost down to the hour. I thought control meant safety. If I could organize my world tightly enough, maybe nothing bad would happen.

These issues are not pathologies. They are predictable, universal core vulnerabilities shaped by the inherent complexities of adoption. Understanding these vulnerabilities helps us move beyond simplistic narratives of adoption as "beautiful," " grateful,"""" or "rescuing," and instead see adoption for what it truly is: a layered experience in which love and loss coexist throughout a lifetime.

We typically believe that the person who is "dumped" during a breakup suffers so much more than the person ending the relationship (the dumper). We think the person who is dumped does not want the relationship to be over, wants to try and fix it, keep it going, stay in contact-anything but end it.

"It's a blessing in disguise," people often say when we're confronted with loss or disappointment. And we generally understand the intention: It's a polite acknowledgment of hardship paired with the reassurance that a silver lining must be hidden somewhere within it-if not visible now, then surely waiting around the corner. But tragedy rarely feels like a blessing while we're living through it. More often, it shakes our sense of certainty, rattles our well-being, and challenges who we thought we were, forcing us to rethink what matters and who we can rely on.

Los Angeles-based photographer Kaitlin Maxwell was raised in South Florida and experienced the passing of her father at a young age. Photography has been a way for Maxwell to navigate the world, find meaning and a sense of identity. Using natural light and a medium format film camera, Maxwell's practice is an intimate study of the human condition, rooted in a desire to understand what it means to be seen.

When Ibrox turns on its own like this, there's a temptation to put in the earplugs and don the crash helmet. It ain't pretty. It's as visceral as it gets; loud and vicious, words coming like blades, capable of cutting their target in half.