If you were asked to define yourself in a single paragraph, what would you say? How would you distill the essence of who you are into a few sentences? This paragraph needs to be more than the simple declarative sentences that begin with “I am,” rather it is a look deeper at what made you who you are today.

Would you start with your chronology? I was born in and grew up in and went to school in and all the rest? Would you begin with those key elements that you hold close, the roles of daughter, sister, wife, mother, friend?

I was faced with this question recently and what instantly came to mind for me were all the things that have defined me, that have paved the direction of my life. It begins, for me, as the daughter who played the role of people pleaser and attempted to be the peace maker in my family. It begins with the drive I still have, to make everything okay for everyone, to create calm, to establish harmony, whether it was real or pretense.

It continues with the necessary recognition of loss and how profoundly that has shaped me. My illusion that my life would go on the way it had always been, with two parents and a beloved sibling, was broken at 25, shattered at 36 and ground into dust at 47. When I say, as I often do, that life changes in the space between one heartbeat and the next, they are words that come from deep within, from wounds that never heal.

My life, my choices, my trajectory are marked as well by love, resilience and gratitude. When we wondered about putting together our family of seven children together, I said, and meant, that “there is always enough love to go around.” I never imagined that my first marriage would not last, that the relationship I had been in since the age of 15, would come to an end. For a long time I thought of ending a marriage as failure and repeated to myself that “I don’t fail.” But I did and we did and, to my surprise, an unexpected love entered my life and together we have created a life and a family we cherish.

Resilience, too, is deeply within me, part of my nature, my personality. After so many losses, after emotionally wrenching experiences, when life felt colorless and flat and days were like drowning in mud, I somehow found myself trying to swim through that mud and slowly, ever so slowly, letting the light back in. While I have plumbed the depths of despair, I am not a person who can live there. While I still own and live the pain, I know I will let the light back in, it is who I am.

I believe that gratitude is also at the core of who I am, perhaps because of loss, in part because of life experiences. Being grateful, taking a moment to acknowledge all the gifts we are given, is something I strive to do every day.

Filling our full hearts is our goal, our aspiration, our wish. Understanding that each of our hearts is unique, each filled in different ways, gives us another window into who we are and who we can be.