After my appointment, I was supposed to meet a friend for a light dinner in the city before heading home. I got to the restaurant and she texted that she had to cancel last minute due to an emergency. I was already seated there with an iced tea, so I figured Id stay and get a light dinner and wait out the rush hour subway traffic going home. The…
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Turning Corners
We are perhaps now forever embedded with certain triggers that can set off at any moment, without warning. I can work towards creating my “new normal” we all talk so much about, and then find myself sitting and staring into space, caught up in a memory or feeling I didn’t expect to land on me in that moment. Sometimes I’m surprised the…
Fractured Relationsships
In my extended family, there’s another young widow, a suicide survivor. Yesterday, from a distance, I saw the effects of grief on her family and friends when all the disagreements, resentments, anger, frustrations, disappointments and grudges amongst each other exploded on social media. The issues have popped up occasionally, but not to…
Of Shoes and Ships and Universes and…
I watched “Interstellar” at the movies a few days ago and came away agitated. It’s a movie that deals with our loved ones existing in parallel universes. Multi-dimensional worlds where we and our loved ones exist on different planes, with real possibilities of communication between the two.Last week I wrote in my blog about researching this…
Next to Me
After Ian died, I adapted back to being in the house as an only adult on my own pretty quickly. I’d lived here on my own for some 6 years before Ian moved in, and he was here for two and a half years. Reverting to a known mode of operation, although unwanted, wasn’t that difficult. Yes I had to factor in care of a toddler, but having to manage…
NYE Trauma and its Lessons
I shared about a month ago about going on a first date with someone. And it’s very hard to share today how that unfolded. Despite my knowing that this person had a lot of problems of his own, I decided to open up and get to know him. For about a month now we’ve talked, had a second date recently. He made me laugh more than anyone has in a long…
Happily Ever After…
…… is just a line in fairy tales. No one knows that better than those of you reading this blog. But then …… if we’re honest …… it always was. Yes, many of us had great marriages. But none of us had perfect marriages. Many of us had terrific partners. But none of us had one who was perfect.I always found it interesting how suddenly…
Dissed
Dislocated. Discombobulated. Disconnected. Disengaged. Disjointed. Disrupted. Disarranged. Disoriented. My career for 10 years or so was in hospice bereavement support. I facilitated groups of all sorts and one of my handouts contained many words used to describe the emotional/physical/spiritual elements of grief. In the year since…
Lesser Losses
When the children were small, I convinced Greg that we should get some pets so that the children could learn about life cycles early in life. They would experience the love and loss of a pet and understand that everything that lives must die.So Greg captured some pullets from themany of chooks at the farm back in 2006.These were hardy farm…
Edgefield
I believe I’m back to being single. At least it seems that way now. Time will tell. It’s a bad timing thing for both of us, so who knows if the timing will be right again. I’m not going to worry about that. It’s beyond my control so I let it go. I learned so much from this relationship and it has been good and hard and precious and enlightening…
Grief
The other day while talking to a very caring friend, I mumbled, “Oh, boy, I can feel it coming.” My friend responded, “What does it feel like?” I laughed out loud because of the inherent insanity of describing something that has been so ever-present in my life to someone who has been blissfully untouched by such pain. Yet, my friend was…