When the thing you fear most actually happens, how do you go on? All my life, I lived in constant anxiety over my fear of losing my children. One night, just two days after burying my mother, I received a phone call informing me that my 25-year-old daughter, Jessica — whom I had just seen the day before — had been found dead in bed that morning.

When my 25-year-old daughter died unexpectedly just two days after I buried my mother, I couldn’t imagine surviving the nightmare I found myself living. I kept telling my older daughter, “I can’t do this, I can’t do this …” to which she wisely replied, “Mom, you’re doing it.”

I would love to say that I’ve learned and grown since losing my 24-year-old daughter Jessica on November 10, 2013, but the truth is all I have managed since is to survive for the sake of my older daughter, Sarah.