Tamera Mowry Shares Emotional Tribute to Slain Niece: ‘You Had a Heart Pure With Love and Kindness’

Tamera Mowry-Housley is mourning the tragic loss of her 18-year-old niece Alaina with a new social media post.

The Real co-host took to Instagram over a month before Alaina was announced as one of the victims of the tragic Thousand Oaks bar mass shooting.

“Alaina. God, we miss you,” Mowry-Housley wrote on the post Friday featuring a photo of Alaina, who passed away on Nov. 7 in the mass shooting at the Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks, California, along with Mowry’s 6-year-old son Aden.

“Yesterday you were supposed to come home,” she continued, presumably referring to the date Alaina was scheduled to return home from college for winter break. “The questions of why consume my mind. But I must hold on to the fact that our Lord is sovereign. The reality of you not being here hits stronger today. I miss your giggles, I miss your smile, I miss the way you would roll your eyes when you heard someone say something crazy. I miss the way you would so gracefully scoop up Ariah and Aden, and the way you took their hands and walked away to play.”

She added: “You had a heart pure with love and kindness. Oh what this world needs more of now. My children loved you. I loved you. I know I have a guardian angel with me now. But selfishly I want you here with me. Until we meet and sing again.”

Mowry then added that her new post also coincided with the six-year anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting, which killed 26 people, including 20 first-graders in Newtown, Connecticut, as first reported by PEOPLE.

“Ironically, 6 years ago today the senseless shooting of #sandyhookelementary occurred,” she wrote, adding comments against gun violence. “Praying for the families and individuals who have had to endure and survive senseless gun violence. The world moves on. We don’t.”

Mowry-Housley made her return to the daytime talk show at the end of November and opened up about the difficult time she and her family have gone through since the tragic events in Thousand Oaks.

“I’m OK.…I’m sorry,” she said on the show. “Our family’s been through a lot, but the interesting thing about grief is that you’ve gotta find the balance of moving forward and grieving at the same time. It’s just been a little over two weeks…she would want me to be here. And she would want me…sweet Alaina…to move forward. I don’t like to say move on, because I don’t think I’ll ever move on with the fact that she’s not here with me or with our family.

“But she would want me to move forward and to use her voice as a catalyst for change, and that’s why I am here today,” she continued. “And I just appreciate the outpouring love and support from everybody. That sweet 18-year-old girl impacted people in such a positive way, and that’s how we’ve been able to move on, the love as my beautiful sister-in-law Hannah said at my niece’s memorial, that’s what we need more today love.”

Alaina was the youngest victim of the Borderline shooting. The college student was laid to rest on Nov. 15.