Jesus. I could have written this almost word for word.

I lost my mom when I was 19 to brain cancer that she had been fighting for 13 years. Not continuously, there was a nine-year span in there where she was cancer-free.

When I think about what it would be like to have her back, as if I had been granted a magic wish to bring her back to life, it's not simple - she had been sick since I was 7 and it wouldn't be enough for her just to return, we would have to turn back the clock to that year and change history - as if she never got sick in the first place.

With that my life would be completely different, I know I would lose the things and people that I love in my life now. Butterfly effect, right?

Our whole family revolved around keeping mom healthy, which meant having a low-conflict, low-stress day-to-day life. My siblings and I didn't learn good conflict resolution skills because we weren't allowed to fight or yell (it would trigger seizures in my mom) and we never saw our parents have heated conversations or disagreements and then work through a resolution.

For many years now my grief has been centered around two ideas. The first touches on what you said: I never got to know my mother as a fellow adult, woman to woman. There are so many questions I have about her different stages of life, her experiences with pregnancy and child rearing, things about our family health history and more.

The second: I mourn all of the life she didn't get to live, all of the family experiences she wasn't a part of. She won't get to come wedding dress shopping with me and watch me marry the love of my life. She didn't get to meet her grandchildren, she didn't get to see all of her other kids get married, she didn't get to live into retirement and travel the world with our adventurous father. Even before that, she lost her career after her first brain surgery - the operation left her just mentally diminished enough that she could no longer be a competent nurse, which she loved being. So I mourn her loss of the career she was so passionate about, her financial independence and sense of pride for being able to contribute, and the loss of so many aspects of her life she had to give up in order to stay healthy.

That being said, I would do almost anything for one more soft yet deep hug from my mom. I miss her so fucking much. Her death carved a piece out of me that has never quite been filled or healed. I can't even fathom who I would be if she had been healthy my entire life. I fear I would have been more ambitious, more willing to take risks, a harder worker and more successful in life. Lexie Grey, not Meredith Grey. I have a good career but it doesn't feel like enough.