It’s very cold here.  Winter has settled upon this sleepy town in which I reside. Snow has fallen and ice has wrapped herself around anything and everything within her reach, clutching as if desperate. I, too, am desperate. Desperate to come in from the cold I was involuntarily tossed out into a short while ago. Desperate to come in and feel the…

I started something. A project some time ago. Something that had the potential to be great. It wasn’t the first time people had criticized my actions or gave me their advice or opinions.   With anything great or new always comes opposition, whether it be other people or ourselves.   When I dated for the first time after Linzi, I questioned…

The world is changing.   Perspectives are changing.   And they will continue to, so long as we journey forward and make attempts, not to be heard, but to hear.   This weekend I dived just a little further down the rabbit hole.   Grief is a funny thing.  It is a powerful and undeniable force, and many are trying their best to either suppress…

Our grief manifests in a plethora of different ways, whether it be sadness and depression or laughter or anger, we each find our own outlet and tend to exhaust them. We do so in even greater concentration perhaps when it comes to the holidays.   These significant events which once upon a time signified love, joy, family, and being together is now…

Sometimes no matter what you do, the grief wave just hits you. You try, and try, and try with all of your might to not let it happen again for whatever reason you give yourself: You’re supposed to be the strong one.  You’ve cried enough, it’s time to stop now.  You don’t want to feel this anymore. Love, the real thing, is eternal. …

This woman.   Life was the calm and she the storm.   Her favorite season. Her favorite holiday.   Thanksgiving was her New Year.  Thanksgiving was the day she reflected on the last year and told everyone how thankful she was to have made it to see another one.   She was thankful she could experience it.   She was thankful she survived it.  …

It’s been a weird week.   It seldom happens to me, not because I think I’m invulnerable to feeling weird or down, but mostly because my mind is too consumed in what I’m doing to pay those emotions any attention.   My mind is a strong one.  That’s not me bragging.  It’s just true.   But even strong minds have their limits.   This…

I stood completely alone in a crowded room. I do a lot of that these days. I suppose I want to feel something, anything, other than what I was feeling.   Life has a tricky way of deciding when it will allow us to feel a certain way or not.  Some things I feel can be a conscious choice perpetuated into reality.  A small lot, however, rears their…

It’s sometimes strange being in new places with people we both knew and loved yet knowing I’m the only one there.  I examined the pastel painted walls of my parents’ new home, a reward of long, strenuous years of hard work and determination.   It’s just another one of many places, many things Linzi will never be here to witness or…

This is a late entry. By design.   I wanted to soak in the entirety of this weekend.   For the first time since Linzi had passed…I’d met an entire group of people with whom I shared a very tragic truth: we had, all of us, lost our loves.   There I stood, talking grief, talking life. Not crying or feeling nostalgic. Not making attempts to…

Part of me is happy Linzi wasn’t here with me in Poland for this trip. Today we visited Auschwitz. It was emotional. It was eye-opening. It was heavy.   I don’t think she could’ve handled it emotionally. She was such a compassionate and loving woman. The pictures of the victims made her look extremely healthy by comparison.   Auschwitz was…