Today is my wedding anniversary. It has been 18 years since I married my best friend at the San Souci in Sea Cliff, NY. 18 years since the music literally stopped playing during our first dance, due to a technical error on the D.J.’s computer. 18 years since we danced our first dance not to […]
Blog
Remembering All Souls
This time of year brings the inevitable reckoning of a three year milestone. Each day, my Social Media feeds deliver me back to those days that changed my life forever. It is a blessing and a curse to be able to relive, in what sometimes feels like real-time, the events leading up to the day […]
As Time Marches On
Every now and then I’ll think about all the things in the world that have transpired since Mario made his exit from this life, big things and small. Part of his depression always included all the bad stuff happening in the world that an individual has little control over. No amount of trying to convince […]
Nervous Eating
Every day, I see small yellow and red leaves falling in the hundreds, relentless falling leaves coloring the lawn. The geese are gathering. Were they drawn together by chance to form the V-formations cutting across the Fall sky? Occasionally, I will hear them honking off in the distance. Robyn was first to spot the small, […]
Trusting Me
Which part of me do I trust? This is me in grief’s low spaces. Grief stricken. Broken. Vulnerable to pain. Feeling useless. What good is a broken bridge? Can I trust the broken parts of me? This is me in grief’s growing places. Evidence of my brokenness is visible. Yet I […]
“I want to give your kids the world.”
As the twins’ birthday trip nears I have found myself caught in a whirlwind of emotions. More so than normal. Any time I’m getting ready for a trip I find myself thinking of Erik more often than I already do. So why do I continue to do it? Because traveling also makes me feel closest […]
Future Inquiries
“Are we going to get a stepdad?” my then 7-year-old asked me. It had been less than one month since Tony died. Like all deep questions posed by children, this one was at bedtime. It was a question for which I was unprepared. I do remember stumbling through an answer. If my widow memory is […]
Let the Sun Shine in. Or Don’t.
I’ve been in my apartment now for about 2 months. Selling our home and going through this divorce has been challenging, emotional, and difficult, to say the least. The emotions are very complex, and they tend to change a lot, depending on how life is going that day, how tired I am, and how I’m […]
Cones of Uncertainty
I thank Mary Moore Hughes for posting for me last Saturday. Living in Central Florida, we’d found ourself twice in a brief span of time in what is called The Cone of Uncertainty, and uncertainty it does bring. Being without internet made it impossible for me to post and I asked Mary to present a […]
Incomplete Grief
I recently came across the term, incomplete grief. The definitions of incomplete grief vary widely from not confronting or not willing to confront feelings of grief to feeling stuck in time and unable to grieve properly. I feel like a lot of us compartmentalize grief—put it up on a shelf so we can attend to […]
The Nearly Perfect Weekend
On Friday, the weather in New York City was picture-perfect. Warm sunshine reflected off the Hudson and the blue sky was completely cloudless. I chatted with a Louisiana woman, now living in New York City. She was with a bearded man wearing a Louisiana T-shirt and two adolescents. Suddenly, displaying a smile sweet as pie, […]
Reel Therapy Repeat is Still Good Medicine
What is Reel Therapy? Gary Solomon’s popular book of the same name suggests that movies can be a therapeutic tool for our lives. A friend of mine gave me this book a long time ago and I pulled it out recently with an instinct that it might be helpful. “In order for cinema therapy to […]