Hi, and thank you so much for being here. It’s been a while since I last showed up in this space, and if you’ve been following me for some time, you probably already know that I have been very quiet across most platforms. Not just from lack of time, but from something much heavier than that. To be completely honest, the thought of sitting down to film this video, to write this post, to come back in any kind of “normal” way, has been incredibly difficult. But I’m here. I’m trying. And even that feels like a big step right now.
I don’t usually like crying on camera, or in front of people, or even in writing if I can avoid it, but this is one of those moments where avoiding it no longer feels honest. 2025 was the hardest year of my life. In January, my mom was diagnosed with cancer, and in September, she passed away. My mom was the person I loved most in this world. She was my anchor, my safe place, and, over time, I’ve come to understand that she was also my best friend.
There’s a particular kind of disbelief that comes with losing someone you never imagined life without. I always thought we had more time. More trips, more conversations, more everyday moments that you assume are infinite when you’re living inside them. I thought I would keep learning from her forever, especially now as a mom myself. I still have so many questions I never got to ask her, so many small, ordinary things I wish I could text her about at any time of day. And that absence is something I carry with me constantly, in ways both loud and quiet.
There is not a single day that goes by where I don’t think about her. Not one. Sometimes it’s a memory that shows up unexpectedly in the middle of something completely unrelated. Sometimes it’s a moment where I instinctively reach for my phone to tell her something, and then remember I can’t. And sometimes it’s just this quiet realization that she’s not here anymore, and I have to learn how to keep going in a world that still looks exactly the same.
The past months have been heavy in a way that is difficult to put into words. I know I haven’t been showing up in the way I used to, and there is a part of me that feels guilty about that, especially in a space where I’ve shared so much of my life for so many years. But there was no version of me that could have continued in the same way through this. I simply couldn’t.
My mom first went into the hospital at the end of 2024, just after Christmas. At the time, we thought it would be something routine, something manageable. No one prepares you for how quickly life can shift from normal to unrecognizable. By the end of January, everything changed. She was diagnosed with a very rare and aggressive form of cancer and transferred to a specialized treatment center shortly after. From that moment on, life became divided into before and after.
I tried to be there in every way I could. I traveled back and forth to Argentina, sometimes alone and sometimes with my husband and daughter. There were stretches of hope, moments where things looked better, where we allowed ourselves to breathe a little easier and imagine that maybe we were on the other side of the worst of it. And then there were moments where everything changed again, where hope and fear existed side by side in a way that felt almost unbearable.
In July, while I was traveling again to see her, we received news that everything had shifted once more. And then in September, she passed away. I remember thinking at the time that anticipatory grief was the hardest thing I had ever experienced. I was wrong. Nothing compares to the finality of loss itself. Nothing prepares you for the silence that follows.
What I’ve learned since then is that grief is not something linear or tidy. It doesn’t move in stages that you complete and graduate from. It comes in waves, sometimes soft and sometimes completely overwhelming. And in a strange way, it is also love that has nowhere to go. I’ve read that before, and I never fully understood it until now.
She was the center of our family. The person who held everything together without ever asking for credit or recognition. And now, learning to exist in a world without her has been one of the hardest things I have ever done.
If you’d like to hear more of this story in my own voice, I’ve shared a video below where I talk through everything more personally.
Sharing this was not easy. I spent a long time wondering if I should even do it. Part of me wanted to stay private, to disappear quietly for a while, to only come back when I felt more “ready,” whatever that means. But another part of me kept thinking about how many people go through something similar, how many of us are quietly carrying grief while still trying to live very visible, very normal lives.
After I shared that my mom had passed, I received hundreds of messages from people who had gone through similar losses. People who had lost parents, siblings, partners, friends. So many of them were young, so many of them mentioned cancer, and so many of them said the same thing: I thought I was alone in this until I read your words.
That stayed with me.
Because even though grief is deeply personal, it is also something incredibly shared. And in that shared experience, there is a strange kind of comfort, even when nothing else feels comforting.
There is also another reason I wanted to come back and share this. I have shared my life online for almost 16 years. That includes so many versions of myself, so many milestones, so many everyday moments that have built this long, ongoing story. And this chapter, as painful as it is, is still part of that story. I don’t want to erase it or hide it, even if it feels difficult to speak about.
And finally, I wanted to say something that feels important beyond my own experience. If there is anything I can gently remind you of through all of this, it is to take care of your health and the health of the people you love. Go to your appointments. Do the checkups. Ask the questions. Follow up. And, more than anything, spend time with the people who matter to you. We always think we have more time. Until we don’t.
Right now, I am slowly trying to find my way back into life, into work, into creativity, into myself. I am not the same person I was before all of this, and I don’t think I will ever be that version of me again. There is a before and an after now, and I am learning how to exist in the after.
I don’t fully know what content will look like moving forward. I know I want to return to the things I love: vlogs, conversations, books, everyday life. But I also know that grief is now part of my life too, and it would feel dishonest not to acknowledge that. So this space will likely evolve with me, as it always has.
If you’ve been here for a long time, thank you for staying. For your patience, for your kindness, for allowing space for silence when I needed it. And if you are new here, I’m glad you’re here, even if this is a heavier beginning than I would have chosen.
If you’ve read this far, thank you. Truly. Coming back to this space, in this way, has not been easy, but I am grateful to be able to share it with you. Grief has changed me in ways I am still trying to understand, but one thing it has made very clear is how deeply I value connection, honesty, and the small sense of community that can exist between people who have never met.
This is the beginning of a new chapter, not a return to who I was before, but a continuation of who I am becoming. I don’t know exactly what that will look like yet, but I hope you will stay with me as I figure it out, one step at a time.
Thank you for being here. I’ll see you in the next one.
