I've been dreading this day all year. Today is the one year anniversary of when we said goodbye to Otto -- the day my heart broke into a million pieces. A lot has happened in the past year: Nick and I adopted Webster, I refocused on this blog, I became a spin instructor, I co-founded a website I love with 3 other women, I started a business. To be honest, I probably did most of these things to distract me from my feelings. I traveled, I wrote, I laughed, I cried… a lot. In fact, I've cried more in these past 12 months than I can ever remember crying. And I learned about grief.

Of all the emotions, grief is the most complicated. And the grief that comes from the finality of death even more so. It grabs you with alarming ferocity at the most unexpected of times. I know the feeling all too well: the constriction in my chest, the shortness of breath, the tears welling behind my eyes. And it really doesn't get any easier: as time goes on, you just get better at dealing with it. It doesn't mean that you can't be happy, it just means that a little part of you is changed. Forever.