On mother’s day just past I spent an hour trying to calm my three year old daughter because she didn’t want to get out of the shower. It was a huge tantrum that left the both of us floored and in tears. Admittedly for a while after John passed I let her walk all over me because I didn’t have the energy for a tantrum if she didn’t get her…

On March 31st, in NYC, I was honored to be chosen to give a TEDx Talk, at Adelphi University. My talk was about how we, as a society, need to change the conversation about grief and loss and death, and change the way we treat both the people we love who have died, AND those that are left behind to miss and grieve them. The talk was performed live…

Emptiness. It seems this word is the one that best describes my life since I dealt with the trauma stemming from Chuck’s death. It was difficult, when I sought trauma therapy, to accurately describe why his death so traumatized me. His hospice time, and the drama involved in that, though I very intentionally shielded him from the drama. …

I am strong, but I am also fragile. My heart feels as though it’s in ever changing pieces, but full at the same time. I am terrified of love, but long for its place in my life again. I am very self-assured but insecure of life around me. Because there are no guarantees and no promises. I make progress daily through this heart ache and take steps…

Hello Dead Husband,  There are days, days like today, that are not special days, just regular, boring, rainy days, where my heart wants so badly, SO BADLY, to be able to  talk to you.  To tell you things.  To lie in bed with you again, and swing our arms back and forth, as we hold hands, and act silly, and sing our silly songs, to the kitties,…

I will sing you to me….. These words curve around my lower right leg, from knee to ankle. My 3rd tattoo.  My first one says nothin’ but love, our credo in hospice.  Those words swirl in a circle on the back of my neck, with the circle ending in a small heart, and the circle is left open.  As my heart must be in this new life without him. My…

Two days ago, I got a phone call no one wants to get, from my friend who got news she never wanted to hear. For the past 6 months, I’ve been on-call for one of my best friends as she goes through the toughest thing she has yet faced in her life. Her dad has been fighting a very aggressive terminal cancer since the holidays, which came quite out…

I am only human. Although I know this life is so much bigger than me, the pain still takes a hold of me while you’re not here. Defeated I feel at times, in need of inspiration. In need of you, our love and your strength. Infuriated, devastated and heart broken. You promised you would protect my heart but it’s shattered. The one person I…

I figured something out this morning, about grief.  It is this …  Things that happen to you, after the loss of your person, that are painful,  hurt way more.  They hurt more than they did in the previous life. The “before” life.    In this “after” life, the one where my person is dead forever, things that hurt,  hurt more.    They hurt…

I wonder, if we, as widows, set ourselves up, if and when the time comes that we step out into the dating world.  *I haven’t dated since my husband’s death, and don’t plan on it, so this is merely me, contemplating the concept* Somewhere back in my second year of widowhood, I spoke about the concept of dating with my daughter, and how not…