I introduced who I am now last week but that is just a piece of me and really, she’s still kind of new around here. The other part of me is the me before Mike died. She was around for a long time and was very comfortable in her skin. At the time, I truly thought that version of myself was very independent but after he died I quickly realized how…
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The Power of This 4 Letter Word~
I believe in Love.I believe that Love enriches and empowers and creates and morphs mere humans into magnificent beings.I believe that life dares us and bids us, at our best and our worst, to open our hearts to Love.I believe that life challenges us, through strife and perplexity and awkwardness, to continue loving in the face of all that it throws…
Winds of Change
Photo source: mapofthenight Grief takes us to a secluded, dark place. We hesitate. We resist settling into this lonely realm. But, in order to slowly breathe life back into ourselves, We have to temporarily take residence in this muted, mysterious environment, I resisted this shadowy, hidden place for a long, long time. I…
Still Searching for Me
I don’t think I ever anticipated how difficult one aspect of dating a widower with kids would be for me… my own self-imposed comparisons. I don’t think I was equipped to handle this, and honestly I’m probably still not doing the best job of managing, though I am trying. It was and continues to be tough that I moved into someone else’s…
Coming Along for the Ride
Don Shepherd likes to send me great, big, obvious signs. I never question that it’s him. I just know. One of the signs he sends over and over, is the big yellow Penske moving truck. On Superbowl Sunday, 2005, Don pulled up in a big yellow Penske truck, with his car attached and his cat in his lap, after driving 24 hours to New Jersey from Florida…
The Me Now
I sometimes feel like I have 2 identities: the me before and the me after my husband, Mike, died. I was originally going to introduce myself by introducing the me before I became a widow but that wasn’t sitting well with me as a first impression. It’s not really who I am today. It is still important to how my current identity developed but it…
No Questions. No Answers~
What I have come to understand about grief and widowhood and the struggles that come with it. Not much. Except that it has the power to eat you up and spit you out, sweating and breathing hard on the other side. When you get to the other side, and it’s anybody’s guess as to when that might happen. There is no timeline for any of this, as I’ve…
1097 and Counting
Three years is not an insignificant amount of time to be in a relationship with someone. Three years is how long Megan and I dated before we were married. Three years is how long Megan was “healthy” during our relationship. Three years is how old Shelby was when her mother was carted away in an ambulance, on her way to an unknown…
Facade
Photo credit: opticalillusionphotos.blogspot.ca It’s been almost fifteen months since Mike died and people around me presume that I am adjusting to life without him. With no experience to draw on, most people believed that the bereaved heal with time. As you know, this is not completely correct. Grief is an active process. With every…
A Hard Battle
Life is a merry-go-round.I’m just riding it until I fall down. I’ve learned that widowed status does not create saints or good people. Good people aren’t created from loss. They can be, but the choice is always available every second of every day. It’s not loss that makes us good or bad people. It’s our choices. We can use that…
Not Lucky, Not Blessed
Id like to write today about the concept of being or feeling “blessed” or “lucky”, what these terms mean to me personally, and how people’s views about faith directly affect their grief thoughts. I know and I respect that each of us has varying and different views on faith, God, and religion. Generally speaking, I think that people should…
Aloha and Mahalo
One of the things I’ve learned – one of the great many things I’ve learned since becoming a widow is that life is change. All things shift, turn on their heads, ebb and flow, and come to an end. We can’t stop it though we may try. I might have thought I understood that before Mike died, but now I really get it. Because something has happened…