Sheinelle Jones

And there'll be times where I'll be tempted to be like, oh my gosh, this crossed my mind.

But then I'm worried that, like, what if they're leaving school and they get it?

Or what if they're with their friends, you know?

So there's a tap dance as their mom, allowing us all to be vulnerable.

And there's a time and a space for us to reflect and also a time for them to show we can't move on.

We can move forward with that.

I think the biggest pain I carry now—and I am not even to a year—

The biggest pain I have is not my own.

And trust me, like, he's all I've known.

I didn't date.

I was 19, you know.

It's not my pain.

It's that I can't fix it.

As a mother, you just want to fix it.

You're a kid.

You don't want him to hurt.

I can't fix this.

And I think when he passed, the blow that it was...

And the grief and all of it, like as the mama bear, for me not to be able to fix it, even now, is excruciating.

It's excruciating that I can't take that pain away, that they have to learn how to deal with it and wrestle with it and hold it.