I'm 30, I lost my mum a few weeks ago.

I loved my mum, she was an incredibly vibrant person and a big personality.

My mum had always been involved with my life, and always alive and interested in the world. We liked a lot of the same things, were both creative and both loved writing and poetry.

My mum was quite an extrovert, and me more of an introvert. I always felt as a young person that I struggled to find my own identity, that I wasn't sure who I was and so I have always been attracted to travelling. Our family have been through a lot of crisis and loss, and so I always feel like I have never truely found myself, or felt detached enough to be able to forge my own way.

The last years I have lived away from home, and tried to create more bounderies between my mum and me, not because I did not love her, but because I felt I needed space to grow. I often felt irratible with her, that she couldnt let me go, and I often found her emotions overpowering. I have been pushing her away from a lot of parts of my life these last years, wanting to claim things as my own. Though we have always been close, I often acted cold towards her, or felt irritbale when we were together.

My Mum was diagnosed with cancer last year, and we had been in touch much more regularly, A few months ago I moved home to be with her after her cancer progressed. I was with her everyday for fourth months until she passed away and sat beside her all night the night she died.

I am in overwhleming grief, and I cant shake my regret of how I acted, how I pushed her away these last years. How I wish we had been able to have a closer adult relationship that was more emotionally mature and honest. I feel so bad for all the times I must have hurt her by being cold or dismissive. I wish so much I could speak to her about why I was being this way, wish so much we could have understood each other better. I wish so much I had celebrated how wonderful she was while she was living, and apprecaited her and all the things she was, all the things she did for me through the years. I know it's useless to think this way but it hurts so much.