Main picture taken in 1973, perhaps 1974, when we had just moved to Brussels ….and so did my brother Edward. I also know that this is a blogsite for widows, and I am widowed. But in addition to losing my husband Mike in 2017, I had only recently lost both my youngest brother Edward (15 […]
Wise and Kind Babes
There has been a recurring question asked of me these past 18 months or so, which is both the time since Julia died, and also the time since I have (formally) been in a relationship. Oddly the question is not about Julia, nor about how I am (those are topics where most mere mortals fear […]
Shattered Christmases
Weird shit happens at this time of year. Weird shit gets said at this time of year too. It feels like it is just a stream of obscene extremes. So many types of polarities and tensions, to hold and somehow absorb. To try not to get too upset about. Festive lights against dark, black-out-curfewed streets. […]
Missing and MISSING
Main Image by Sarah Treanor on streanor.com One of the (many) difficult things about loss and grieving is that while it makes up an inordinately large portion of my life (and is sometimes all-consuming), it is hard to express, lonely to experience, and frustrating in its unpredictability. I rarely feel understood except by my Grieflings […]
My First Podcast – Living with Loss (what else?)
A different kind of post… My first ever podcast 2020 has been the year of being on webinars and panel discussions about grief and loss and suicide and more but this is the first podcast I have ever participated in, and I think it’s worth sharing. Lasts 37 mins. https://anchor.fm/untamingfemininity/episodes/Living-with-Loss-with-Emma-Pearson-encfa2
Today, I have lived 19,615 days
Main image by Jonathan Chng on Unsplash 8th December 2020 Today I have lived 19,615 days Today, 8th December 2020, I am the exact age, to the day, that Mike was when he died Mike was born on 27th July 1963 I was born on 27th March 1967 Mike died on 8th April 2017 I… […]
Categories
The notion of categories has come up for me a few times these past days and weeks. Categories and rating scales. I am far from being an expert in measurement but I have designed myriad surveys in my professional decades, and even contributed to psychometric tools where, really, accurate measurement has to be a tad […]
I Nearly Said “Micky”
Main image – Easter 1988, our first dirty weekend away, in Cornwall, UK To want to have sex, love-making, and intimacy (deep intimacy) in my life again was not a difficult decision for me to make when Mike was no longer breathing. Unlike many of my widowed buddies who could not, cannot, or will not […]
What I Wouldn’t Give
Today is one of those days where Julia’s death, the reality of it, gets through to me… just a little bit more. Despite it always being present, always heavy in my heart, wearisome in my lungs, ponderous on my shoulders, tense in my jaw, sick in my stomach, light, shaky and trembly in my hands […]
On Love and Risk
Main image from the LA Times, July 2020 Remember when, back in the 1980s, just as we were getting sexually active (if you’re my age), and AIDS hit….? There were all those adverts, in the UK at least, on billboards, in the press, perhaps even on TV – (no social media back then), of a […]
Resilience is…
I could have gone a few different directions for this week’s writing. One was going to be about some death admin that was, in the end, straightforward and easy, if also hard. I might yet write about that, just because I do so love challenging my embedded belief that all admin (death admin) is horrendously […]
Facing Death, Embracing Life
My beautiful friend Joan, one of the very very very few people who has (a) consistently been present, (b) more or less accessible, and (c) capable of sitting with and exploring whatever colour and shade of emotional energy has come up for me these past four, very long years, co-facilitates a personal development programme called […]