When Dan was alive he used to tell me I worked too hard. The word “work” mostly referred to one or another creative project in addition to my professional job. He was right. I don’t have great boundaries sometimes and the middle of the night, or the wee hours of the morning, are when I […]
A Story of Widowed Life
as told by the Nasturtiums Signs of spring are everywhere in Riverside, California. Today’s post is a story board, courtesy of a magical plant whose leaves are a story in and of themselves. Studying a nasturtium leaf brings to mind images of fairies hiding beneath, or tiny creatures using the leaf as an umbrella amid […]
A Love Letter
After Valentine’s Day Hey love, I made it through another valentines day — so well, in fact, that I forgot it was Wednesday and I’m just writing this! Writing to you is always easier than writing to others, so here we are, my love, conversing online on the day after Valentine’s Day. Through the lens […]
Valentines, Valentines, Valentines Everywhere . . .
. . . it’s here again In trying to take stock of Valentine’s Day past, memory is fuzzy. Images come forward of our last V-Day together… Family room with hospital bed set up Candles Decorative hearts abound Did we eat? It seems a blip on the radar screen of a long goodbye with no clear […]
Both/And
Both/And thinking [the opposite of either/or thinking] recognizes the folly of assuming that the new will totally supplant the old. Seeing with Both/And eyes recognizes that two opposite realities can be integrated. Adapted from Daniel Burrus at Burrus Research Today’s repost is certainly one worth sharing again! Today marks two months and two weeks since […]
Inspiration from
The Widow Clicquot Who was 4 and a half feet tall with light colored hair and grey eyes and stormed the champagne industry during the French Revolution? That’s right! Barbe-Nicole: The Lady Herself Barbe-Nicole was widowed in 1805, at the age of 23. Women of that time were not allowed to run a business, but […]
Mapping Grief:
A Man Called Otto. We first meet Otto six months after his wife’s death. With no apparent family, and having cut ties with those he was once close with, a grief-stricken Otto is isolated and in constant pain. He rages like a wounded bull as he goes about his daily life in the tiny neighborhood […]
Resilience
What is resilience? the Sea asked the Rock Ask the tree the Rock replied What is Resilience? the Sea asked the Tree We are it the Tree replied Sky, Tree, Plants, Rock, and Sea each in our own way. Keep going.
Reflections on Grief
From Toko-Pa Turner Gift from the new year — a single piece of paper with quotes about grief from Toko-Pa Turner’s book, Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home. There is nothing on the paper to say where it came from who typed it if it was a gift to me or . . . ??? I find […]
Regrouping After Trauma
Step By Step Professionals who write about trauma these days say that when a person experiences a trauma (small or large) it is important to allow the trauma to “keep moving through” our psyche. Last week I experienced a trauma that bumped into a bigger trauma that looms in my life—Death. Death was present in […]
A Collision of Griefs
COLLISION implies the coming together of two or more things with such force that both or all are damaged or their progress is severely impeded. —Merriam Webster Not a great day today. Not an actual collision, but a collision of complications connected with the death of my husband. If I were to name it, were […]
The Longest Night
At the winter solstice the Sun travels the shortest path through the sky, and that day therefore has the least daylight and the longest night. [Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica] Last night I participated in a meet-up titled Still Point, a reference to that longest night on its way to us. Sixty minutes of spontaneous art shared […]