This weekend marks the birthday of my sister who would haved turned 64 tomorrow. Growing up, I envied her summer birthday celebrations. I got blizzards and weather-related postponed parties and she got beaches and pool parties. We were very different, yet very close. I still can’t believe she is seven years gone. I know she […]
Multiple Losses
“Ruff” and Random Thoughts
Last week I wrote about the one year anniversary of the passing of my dad on April 29. Then I realized there was another milestone of sorts. April 28th marked the two and a half year point of my Widowhood. I guess it’s good that I wasn’t so fixated on this milestone, but it made […]
An Eye Opener:
Worldwide Widowed Communities What took me to stories about widowed folk around the world? Just returned from a mini-vacay where I had no responsibilities other than showing up for the fun. Arriving home to my regular routine, settling into the normal challenges of my post-Dan-life, I found myself wondering about the lives of […]
Recalling My Dad
Monday, April 29, marks the one year passing of my father. At times it seems like it was just last week that he passed in his Assisted Living Facility in Georgia. I’d been an advocate for my father since he’d moved south from New Jersey to live with my late husband, Rich and I, in […]
A Tribute to My Mom
On Wednesday of this past week I received word that my mother, Cindy, had passed peacefully at my brother’s home in New York State. I was at the airport in Charlotte at the time, waiting for my connecting flight to Albany when I learned of her passing. It made me feel better that she was aware […]
Christmas Cheer “Condensed”
Awaiting stormy East Coast weather and settling in to write my weekly Post. I continue to coordinate with family at a distance as my mom faces post stroke challenges up in New York State which has been my recent primary focus. I often remind those who are assisting us that my mom lost her husband […]
What is Grief . . .
. . . someone asked. a puzzle an enigma one long and unpredictable complication . . . a testament to love. grief the remnant from the flood proof that love existed love’s receipt. The poet, John O’Donohue says it best: For Grief When you lose someone you love, […]
Endings, endings, endings everywhere
Main image by Ben Wicks on Unsplash One of my favourite “change” models (and I know quite a few) is that of Bill Bridges – and crucially, it’s called “Transitions”. I love this man’s work for so many reasons – not least because I trained for my first marathon, back in 1997, with his daughter […]
When the Time is “Write”, so is The Teacher
This past week I’ve been diligently working on material that will be used for a workshop I’ll be presenting in San Diego at Camp Widow at the end of next week. My workshop is titled Using Written Word to Capture and Comprehend Your Personal Journey. It’s a daunting and challenging quest, but one that I […]
Four Years – p l e a s e let him be right
Photo my own Most of my death and dying, and grief and loss reading, has been in English. While my French is “fluent for a Brit”, it’s nowhere close to perfect, and by golly does grief take a cognitive toll. I don’t often willingly pick up a book in French – much less an “academic” […]
The trickiness of “How Are You?”
Image by Markus Spiske on Unsplash Yesterday, a fellow widbud, a woman I have never met but who someone connected with me, and who lost her husband just before Christmas 2022 after a very short illness, wrote the note below. I responded to her with both sharing some of my recent writing on this very […]
Time After Time After Time After Time
Photos my own This is – and will continue to be – a weekend full of experiments. A lot of my life is still versions of experimentation, if not in the ways it was immediately post-loss(es) when even just venturing out of the front door and heading to the shops felt like an experiment. This […]