This week, I have been clearing and cleaning the home that I shared with my beloved husband, and, in doing so, I have rummaged through the drawers and boxes that contain the artefacts of his life. I have given away his posters and much of the artwork that hung on our walls. I have let go of his record collection. I have organised his seemingly…
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Bringing New Love Home
I have gone through a myriad of emotions the past few days. Mike is down this weekend visiting me from Ohio… it is the first time he is meeting my family and a lot of my closest friends. It’s one of those big and bittersweet and totally surreal steps forward. Even more so because he is coming for a special event – an annual camping trip that…
My Other Soul Mate
I’ve spent the past week at a holistic healing and yoga retreat in Bali, Indonesia and planned to tell you all about it today. It was an incredible week. I’m still processing everything that happened and trying to work out how to put it in to words. On top of that, my 6-hour flight home landed in Brisbane at 4:45am this morning so I…
Anchor
I went to the doctor today. I know. That doesn’t sound like a big deal, but believe me, in my world, it is. When my husband died suddenly just under 4 years ago, we were living paycheck to paycheck. We shared his beat up old car to get to our jobs, and we had nothing in savings. We lived in a crappy and small apartment in New Jersey, and we were…
Unintended Solitude
I used to enjoy solitude. My mother tells me that when I was a child, I used to prefer playing in my room by myself with my toys and books to playdates with friends. She said I’d spend hours up there alone, and even thought it was a bit odd for it. Not to say I never played with other kids – of course I did. But a lot of the time, I was…
Grief and Sex and…what?
Sex and widowhood. I don’t hear much about it but I wonder about it. I wonder about it because I think about it. You probably do too. So I read an article this week about widowers and sex. It was kind of a sexist article, in that it spoke to the belief that widowers seek sex as a panacea to grief, that men tend more to emotions such as anger,…
These Two Years and a Little More~
This new world of widowhood and what is different now, besides everything:I used to love crowds of people and was a great conversationalist. I was good at making people feel comfortable and engaged with them easily. Now it’s really kind of tough for me to be in groups of anything more than 3 or 4 people and that’s usually when it’s family or…
Optimism
I’ve reached somewhat of an odd stage in my journey over the past few weeks. I’m having some significant anniversaries coming up, but they are not events that would normally have been celebrated. The month of June has been surprisingly significant to me, and it wasn’t something i could have planned for or expected. June 2014 was when…
Grief Like A River
For the past few weeks, I have become weary of this grief. It’s not that I want to deny or forget my husband. I am still talking to him and kissing his photo in the mornings. I still think of him many times throughout the day and remember his words and his mannerisms and the unique way he walked down the hill toward the car. It is just that the…
The Walk of Grief
A few weeks ago while I was in Virginia, I got to do something I’ve been wanting to do ever since Drew died. There is a spiritual center in Virginia Beach called A.R.E. – full of studies and books about spirituality and just about every topic imaginable related to death and afterlife. They also have a labyrinth on the grounds outside. Which is what…
Can I Really Do This
I’m writing this from an airplane, somewhere over the Indian Ocean, as I’m on my way to Bali to spend a week at a beautiful yoga and healing retreat. It’s a funny story actually… this whole trip only got planned on Tuesday. Yes, as in four days ago. It came about through a range of unusual circumstances and has really had me thinking about…
Everywhere
There was a time, early on in my loss, where I felt like I was constantly on the search for my husband. Every second of every day was spent , in my mind and heart, trying to locate him somehow. People kept telling me over and over and over that he is always with me, that he is in my heart, and all those other cliche’, blah-blah-blah things that…