This is going to be short and sweet this week, because our life lately consists of prepping for the latest round of snow, after just getting pelted with the LAST round of snow before that one. And so on and so on until the end of time. Or, hopefully, another 3 weeks or so, when […]
How Do I Live Without You? (Literally. I have no money to survive.)
Happy Sunday, widowed peeps, and other peeps who support and follow this blog. (Thank you!) So today, in one of the Facebook widowed groups, the topic of finances came up in a post. A member of the widow community posted because she will be giving a presentation at Camp Widow Tampa about tips on what […]
Detours
So last night I had a strange dream. Well, I had many little dreams, but this was the last dream I had right before waking up this morning, and its the one I remember. In parts. In the dream, I was at the Marriott Hotel for Camp Widow, which I have been a presenter at […]
Decades
Today is my parents wedding anniversary. 57 years together, so far. Today is also the anniversary of the day that Don Shepherd moved in with me, and packed up his life from Florida and left it to take a risk on a life with me, in New Jersey, just minutes outside NYC. He drove his […]
Old Dreams, New Dreams
Yesterday I met up for coffee with someone who may very well be a colleague as a fellow grief-counselor, to ask her some questions about doing this work and all the tiny details involved. We sat there, two strangers both affected and changed by loss in completely different ways (she is a Buddhist, a minister, […]
“Second Chapter” and other Widowed Vocabulary
So, much like other groups of people who are sharing a similar life experience, the widowed community at times has a language of its own when talking with each other. Some of this vocabulary has developed naturally over time and then spread through the community, and some of it was created or started by someone […]
The Death of Lisa Marie
This week, the world got the news about the sudden death of Lisa Marie Presley; the only child of the legendary Elvis Presley. So now her mom Priscilla is living on earth without her only child, just as Lisa Marie was living here on earth without her son Ben, who died by suicide in 2020. […]
Don-spired
In the eleven years since the sudden death of my husband, there are so many things I have learned and continue to learn about life, about death, about grief, and about many other things. I think the thing that I have come to learn the most and also over and over again, is that no […]
Peaceful New Year
New Years Eve and New Years Day is a loaded and complex time for a lot of people; and most likely especially for anyone who is grieving or going through a significant loss of any kind. The main word that comes to mind for me when I think about New Years Eve/Day is this: PRESSURE! […]
Ghosts of Widows Christmas Past
Last night, the husband Nick and I had his adult son Nicholas and his girlfriend Jessica over to the house for Christmas Eve. We exchanged gifts, and Nick made us a yummy dinner of pork loin, smashed potatoes, and roasted veggies which were very colorful and quite tasty. We chatted for awhile about everyday things, […]
On this day
On this day back in 2005, it was the Sunday before Christmas, just like this year. It was very very cold – somewhere in the low 20’s. It was windy. We were in NYC and standing beneath the base of the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree, when Don Shepherd got down on one knee and asked […]
Laughing Always Helps
Being a comedian and actor since as I can remember, making people laugh has always been a form of delight for me. It always instantly made me feel better to hear or watch someone else laughing. Even as a young kid, when me and my cousins would put on little shows and musicals in our […]