I’ve lost my body connection. In the months since my dearest husband died, my body has become alien to me and I realized it fully last week when I joined a gentle stretching yoga class. My daughter was the instructor and she is, indeed, gentle in both movement of body and in manner.Maybe, possibly, the difficulty had to do with the varying…
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Clean or Dirty
Something I’ve begun to distinguish since Dave died is clean pain versus dirty pain. I can’t remember the original source of this idea, though I’ve read about the concept several different times. Clean pain is the pain we feel when we lose someone or something we love dearly. It’s the pain we naturally feel when we’re ripped from…
A Beginning in the End
A lot of us talk about various times during this horrible journey where a shift begins to happen. It’s nothing concrete or tangible, it may not even be something we can easily define… all we know is that something has changed in us and the way we view what has happened to us. That is the shift.Since the new year began, I’ve been feeling as…
Reminder
I know with V-Day having past, that it’s good to have reminders that their love lives on. So I’d like to share this favorite story of mine:It was February 12th, 2009, and I decided to do something I had given up after Michael’s passing…create homemade Valentine’s Day cards. Making cards was one of my favorite things and with it being a dismal…
Dance Class
The first Valentines Day without my husband was torture. Everything that existed in the universe felt like a personal attack. The cheap-looking bears holding heart-shaped balloons on a stick at CVS, the conversation heart candies, the kissing and giggling couples around every corner. It all felt like one, giant personal attack on me and my loss.The…
Slow Dance, Last Dance
So, here I am, writing my first blog right before Valentine’s Day. Right before what would have been our 24th wedding anniversary. I’m getting ahead of myself, I know. I was going to introduce myself, give some back-story, and I promise I will. But maybe, because of the timing of this first entry, I’ll give you a glimpse into the world that was…
First Thursday
February 11 is a happy day for me (also marked with some trepidation) … it’s my son’s birthday. He who is so much his father, is turning three.But since I generally write ahead of time, making use of the time I can sit in front of a computer screen uninterrupted while he’s in child care, and I’m writing on February 7, John’s birthday…
Time
Finding ways to fill my time after Dave died was a huge challenge. I needed to stay busy and connected to others, but I wasn’t any good for social situations, especially early on. I was zombie-like and had difficulty relating to anyone else who hadn’t experienced widowhood. I couldn’t talk about what I used to talk about. Gossip, work-related…
Signs of Flight
Since Drew was a helicopter pilot, helicopters and anything to do with flying are always the biggest signs I get from him. I even found a tiny toy helicopter in this shack on the island of Barbados last spring while vacationing there with his family. It had washed up on the beach and the guy collected it to sell in his shop. No joke!And just a few…
Lost
I was having a farewell dinner this evening with a friend…which usually equates to sharing our thoughts on life and all that it teaches/has taught us thus far.At one point during our conversation, he looked at me and said, “Taryn, there was a quote from a book that changed my life. I want to share it and I want you to absorb it.”Intense!That was…
Philip Seymour Hoffman – What a Waste
How could he be so selfish? He had a wife and 3 kids. Didn’t he care at all about them? Why would he throw it all away to do drugs? Life gave him everything. He had money, opportunity, talent. He had it all, and he still chose to do heroin anyway. Why didn’t he just stop? What a waste. Pretty harsh, right? Yeah. Just writing it and then reading…