🧠✨ Neuroplasticity, Grief, and the Legacy of My Mother

It’s been months since my mother entered heaven.

The sting isn’t as sharp as it was in those first heavy days. Grief, as I’m learning, isn’t linear. It ebbs and flows. One moment, I can look at her photo and smile, and another, I dissolve into tears that catch me by surprise.

I’ve had days where I could speak her name without choking up. And others, when I felt the full collapse of missing her so deeply. This is grief. This is love, stretching itself across the veil of life and death.

But now something else has started stirring in me: questions. Fears. Wonderings.

“Will I get dementia too?”

“Are the small lapses in memory, misplacing my ring, forgetting a sentence mid-thought, signs of what’s to come?”

“Was it genetic? Or did something trigger it in her?”

My mother had many health battles: fibromyalgia, heart problems, thyroid cancer. After a hospital visit for pain, she fainted from her medication and hit her head. That moment changed her. Soon after, her behavior started to change.

At the time, I didn’t know what to look for. I wish I had all this knowings and knowledge of the mind and body connection. I wish I could have walked her through the patterns of stress and fear that might’ve weighed heavily on her mind.

🧠 Can the Mind Really Change the Brain?

These days, I’m turning to what I do know.

As I study neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to rewire and renew, I realize there is hope. There is agency. There is healing that even science didn’t used to believe in.

Romans 12:2 echoes in my heart:

“Do not conform to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

This isn’t just scripture. It’s biology. It’s truth.

The thoughts we rehearse, the beliefs we feed, the emotional states we dwell in they shape our neurons. They influence our hormones, our immune system, and even our risk of cognitive decline.

So maybe it wasn’t genetics. Maybe it was stress. Loneliness. The pressure to keep pushing through pain. The silent suffering she bore with grace.

Now, I choose to do differently.

Even though I still misplace things. Even though I forget small tasks.

I know how to recalibrate. Reset. Renew.

🕊️ What I Remember Most

When I think of my mother now, I choose to remember:

    •    Her warm, working hands always helping.

    •    Her encouraging words, always ready.

    •    Her busyness not frantic, but faithful.

    •    Her love, steady and real.

These are the memories I let take up space in my mind. They’re stronger than the images of her final days. Stronger than the morphine. Stronger than the fear.

🌱 Breaking the Pattern, Building the Legacy

Now I’m honoring my mother through the work I do, supporting others to walk through their pain, to find new thoughts, and to shape new lives.

Neuroplasticity is a new word in our house now.

My children hear it. They’re learning what I never knew until too late:

That you can change your brain.

That you can shift the future.

That your thoughts matter, they mold you.

This is the legacy I choose to pass down.

Not fear. Not helplessness. But hope.

Hope that healing is real.

Hope that God works through the renewing of the mind.

To my mother, Espenranza (Hope):

You’re still with me.

In every breakthrough.

In every soul I help.

In every renewed thought.

This healing is for you, too.