Looking back on that first year after the attack, I can see just how bitter I had become. After the initial heartbreak and devastation of facing permanent injury wore off, I was just angry. Angry that I would never have the athletic career I’d imagined. Angry that I’d never have the life I’d imagined.

Surviving a traumatic event does not mean its effects simply disappear once the physical scars heal. Understanding and learning to live with the invisible scars—including PTSD, anxiety, disrupted sleep and grief—can take much longer.

My dad passed away 16 years ago on October 1, 2009 six months after a heart transplant. His last stay in the hospital lasted two and a half weeks. One of the ways I honored his memory was by remembering Paris Thomas, a security guard at New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

Grief can take many forms. The most familiar is when we are faced with the loss of a loved one. There are rituals of mourning, familiar ways of providing comfort and an accepted and understood common language that we use to show our support. What about when we grieve the loss of an Identity? Or the loss of a Relationship? A Job? A Dream? Although the emotions might be similar, there are often no rituals, no common language.

Pictures, videos, memory boxes—these are all that remain of my daughter Adaya, and sometimes, they hold her echo so vividly that they break me all over again.