In Loving Memory of My Mother, Beatrice Wanjiku Gichohi (1971-2021)
Kaleidoscope Blog is a tribute to my mother — her life and her passing. Losing her shattered me. Scattering pieces of myself I did not know could break. It felt like I had lost my center. I was drifting without the anchor that had always held me steady. Her death forced a confrontation with self: Who exactly am I without her?
My mother was an extraordinary woman. Simply being her daughter was a source of deep pride and comfort. When she died, I was thrust into a painful metamorphosis. On the outside, I may have looked unchanged. On the inside, I was undone. It felt as though the very atoms of my being had fallen apart.
It was like living inside a kaleidoscope—constantly shifting, patterns breaking and reforming with each turn of grief and each flicker of growth. And yet, in time, something began to glow within me. Her death broke me—but in that breaking, I was made new.