In the beginning, I couldn’t imagine talking about anything else. Did you hear? My husband died. I’m a widow. You have something else to talk about? Why? Is there anything else in the entire world that matters as much as this fact? Talking about anything else felt like forcing my brain to think around the sound of a tornado tearing through…
Blog
Strut
It’s been said that once we have found the true path, destiny unfolds before us like a red carpet. I’m a believer of that and the fact that much of destiny (if not all) is determined on our ability to self-propel ourselves into it. Sometimes we don’t notice our forward trajectory and the red carpet unfolds at a slow speed, that years…
Happy Birthday
Yesterday was my fiance’s 30th Birthday. I don’t say “would have been” because it doesn’t make me feel like I am allowed to still celebrate it when I saw that. So instead, I say that it was, and is, the day he turned thirty. Even if he isn’t here physically, saying it that IS his birthday helps me have permission to still celebrate.The morning…
Sick of It
I need to whine. Actually, scratch that. I’m not a whiner. I need to bitch.I am not in love with my life right now. Right this minute. This “after” life that was handed to me in grenade form, exploding in my hands seconds upon it’s rude entrance. Who the hell asked for this life – this life where I no longer have a husband? Where we don’t get to…
Day Number 5 on the Road
Hi there everyone. This is Megan from www.refugeingrief.com. I’m filling in for Amanda today. My partner, Matt, drowned on an otherwise ordinary day in July 2009, the first sunny day after 6 solid weeks of rain. He was 3 months shy of his 40th birthday. Last fall, I packed up the place where we’d lived, said goodbye to all the familiar…
Time. And love.
Time means nothing and it means everything since my husband died. My heart beats its’ rhythm. It plods and it races and jumps and bumps and shatters and breaks and leaps and is subtle and loud. All at the same time sometimes.In one month it will be one year since he died.I turned 56 two months after he died. When people ask me I always…
It’s a matter of perspective…
A: I’ll be devastated if they don’t playB: I’m sure Mick’s more devastatedA: It’s all a matter of perspective.The Rolling Stones were due to play my city on Saturday night just gone and this was one exchange that appeared on my Facebook feed in the first 24 hours of Mick Jagger joining our ranks.My jaw was on the ground and I thought “I’m…
Creating
There are times when I start to write a post or create a new art project and I get stuck. Suddenly, every idea I have and every mark I make or word I type is wrong. Wrong, stupid, vapid, empty, annoying, pandering, arrogant, contrived. I annoy myself. I disgustmyself. I decide that I will not be able to write anything helpful. I will not be able…
Listen
“Listen- life is really going on, right now, around us. Do you see it? Sometimes I lose it, but if I sit still and listen, it comes back, and then I think, how funny, this is what being alive is.” -Robin MorganI need to start this blog post with apologizing.In the 5 years of being a Widow’s Voice writer, I’ve recently been failing at my Saturday…
Weighing the Days
Yesterday was a hard day. Exactly a week until Drew’s birthday, perhaps I don’t remember how hard it was last year… but I could swear it’s hitting me harder this year. My body seems so much more aware of the lack of his body, but also just the feeling of him in the space is far more distant now. I downplayed that first sentence… it was a…
The Second Thing
A fellow widowed friend of mine recently brought my attention to this wonderful quote, said by the character Reddington, from the TV show The Blacklist. The quote is this:”There is nothing that can take the pain away, but eventually you will find a way to live with it. There will be nightmares, and everyday when you wake up, it will be the first…
The little things
…that annoy me (and drive me to drink).Warning – disorganised tiredness and general whining follows….. Somedays I think being a widow has taught me patience, but there are other days when I realise my fuse is very short and I have no time for pedants and things that make my life harder.I question why, instead of helping to simplify my…