All photos my own, taken this week in the French Pyrenees I could write tons of letters of encouragement to my Widbuds, or indeed Grieflings of any fragrance or flavour. Whether it’s about putting one foot in front of the other; trusting that one heartbeat or breath will follow another; finding the wherewithal to write […]
Multiple Losses
Nice enough. Just not “right”
View of “Le Canigou” – the Pyrenees’ highest mountain – from my parents’ house, after a summer storm 3 August 2020 We have been on holiday now for a “fat” week. “We” is Megan, Ben, Medjool and me. A “fat” week is 10 days. The first 7 days were spent in the Camargue, a beautifully […]
The Keeper of the Lighthouse
Grief’s gaze. I knew it as soon as I got it this week. It’s that look you get from someone who has just suffered a new great loss. It conveys so much with so little. It’s so very different from the look they give to others all around them. Yeah it’s quite a powerful look […]
Grief Maths
Main ArtWork by Angela Franklin, Grief Will Teach You Math, When You Subtract One (2019) https://demifgallery.com/artworks/9478-angela-franklin-grief-will-teach-you-math-when-you-subtract-2019/ I am no mathematician. I was pretty weak at maths at school, and given the option of having 7 or 8 hours of maths a week vs 3 or 4 hours in my final two years, it was […]
Embracing the Detours
This year has meant a lot of detours for many. For all of us who are widowed, the metaphor of a detour is a bold one… the idea of the road being closed ahead and suddenly we are to choose a new direction…
Wrapping Loss in Love
Photo by Karim MANJRA on Unsplash I spend a lot of my time reading about death, dying, and grieving, participating in webinars and holding space sessions with grief experts, people who’ve developed wise perspective on what it is to love, to lose, and to continue living. Apart from two moments since Mike’s death, I have […]
Post Mortem – a year on
This past week we have been honouring and commemorating Julia. (And Mike. And Ed. And Don. Of course). Like we do every day. Of course. But particularly Julia this week. The first “deathiversary”. The first anniversary post mortem. I don’t really know why the one-year anniversary feels like such a rite of passage. It’s not […]
When Negativity Takes Over
What happened instead is that an opening was made, for that voice to come back and haunt me. That voice that tells me I am cursed in some way from ever having those milestone, big, beautiful moments in my life.
Incongruities of a Summer’s Day
Just like I always feel a twinge of glee on 21st December (we have reached the shortest and darkest 24-hour period in the Northern Hemisphere – yippee!), I also feel a twinge of sadness on 21st June when we have reached the longest, lightest day. There’s a clear message there about not living in the […]
Rewriting Friendship Contracts
Photo by Jude Beck on Unsplash I had one of those rollicking walloping moments of insight a few days ago after what had been months of sporadic back and forth Whatsapping with a lovely friend, (let’s call her Catherine), who I met decades ago at university. We were really close in those years and stayed […]
A Better Busy Bryan
Just after Clayton passed, I was forced to get a second job. I started up an online business which allowed me to work from anywhere. I wasn’t locked into a schedule, at a location with someone else’s requirements. I worked extremely hard to quickly get to a point I felt financially safe again. I hit […]
Parallels
Photo by Jonathan Pendleton on Unsplash Like just about everyone with a heart on the planet, I have been saddened, distraught and moved to tears many times these past couple of weeks as the upwelling of grief and anger in the US (and the UK, and France, to name just a couple of other places), over race, bias, […]