Just one month ago I said “I Do” for the second time. And with that I entered a brand new chapter of life with my little boys in tow.

I am often struck by the magnitude of the changes I have gone through these past several years. I went from being a young wife and mother still reeling from the loss of my daughter to cancer, to a single mother devastated by the toll that loss had taken in my family, to a point where I can now see the true beauty that has come from all the devastation.

I have struggled with putting words into my blog for some time now. And it took awhile to realize that it is because I am no longer in a space of complete and utter devastation.

I still miss my daughter every single day, but the experience of her loss has softened after nearly 5 years. My work at her foundation makes grieving her so much easier. Putting my all into the Olivia Caldwell Foundation allows me to be her mother and say her name each and every day.

It took a long time and a ton of work in therapy to come to grips with the devastation that entered my home and my family a little over two years ago. I never wanted or expected my first marriage to end in divorce, but ultimately, divorce was the only option I had. However, even with that knowledge, I still had to deal with so much fallout and guilt from making such a terrible decision.

Life today is still sometimes hard. There are days that I am overcome with grief where Olivia is all I can think of. But I have learned how to take care of myself and to live in gratitude for the beauty that can come from the ashes of devastation.

I decided that it was time to do a blog re-design to go with this new stage in life, and that is why this blog is now “Beauty From The Ashes.” It’s time to tell the rest of my story in the hopes that it will help someone else.

I certainly don’t have all the answers. But I do know that it is possible to move forward and live a new life after loss. It might even be more wonderful then you could ever imagine.

– Katie Caldwell-Burchett (Learn more about the author)