This weekend has been amazing. Challenging, scary, exhausting, sweet, beautiful, silly, and bursting at the seams with love. Mike and Shelby have been here now for 3 days and this afternoon they head home back to Ohio. I can scarcely even put into words how amazing and terrifying all this has been. After countless hours of Skype calls – to meet her…
Widowed and Healing
Grieving the Grief Years
I had an all-out breakdown a few days ago. The kind I haven’t had in at least a year. I am chocking it up partly to hormones and the damned full moon, but also to everything else going on. Nothing is settled in my life. Most of the time I am used to this, and I ride the waves well. But sometimes it piles up. My career as an artist is sort of like…
Compromise and Guilt
Photo: Circus skills class As this pregnancy draws closer to the end, I’ve found myself thinking about how different John’s early childhood’s been from what Ian and I had wanted – particularly what I’ve done and how I’ve engaged with John as a mother. We all have grand plans of the childhood we hope to give our kids. Play…
Start Where You Are
I’m feeling a bit worn down today. I’ve been trying hard the past few weeks to keep a new schedule and really buckle down on getting work done. Working for myself has been the hardest possible thing I could have added to my life these past few years since he died. It never seems to get any easier… unlike the grief, I don’t know that it’ll ever…
The Sisterhood of the Travelling Widows
There is something so very unique and special about the friendships that form between widowed people. Last weekend I got to hang out with some of my favourite people – all widows who I’ve met since Dan’s death. We’ve bonded over our mutual understanding of what it’s like to live this nightmare – through many nights of teary phone…
Learning to Slow Down
I’m naturally a person who likes to have a few things on the go at once. Hence I’m currently combining solo parenting and John’s various activities, studying and a pregnancy, plus involvement at the leadership level of a community organisation. I’d not say I’m making a success of being busy (2 finals this week and I am WAAAAY…
My Week of Retreat
The quest for peace, acceptance and happiness after losing my husband to depression has taken me to some unexpected places. It has lead me travelling (around Australia to meet with other widows and to the USA to connect with Soaring Spirits at Camp Widow), encouraged me to try new things, forced me to open myself up to ideas about life and…
Bringing New Love Home
I have gone through a myriad of emotions the past few days. Mike is down this weekend visiting me from Ohio… it is the first time he is meeting my family and a lot of my closest friends. It’s one of those big and bittersweet and totally surreal steps forward. Even more so because he is coming for a special event – an annual camping trip that…
Can I Really Do This
I’m writing this from an airplane, somewhere over the Indian Ocean, as I’m on my way to Bali to spend a week at a beautiful yoga and healing retreat. It’s a funny story actually… this whole trip only got planned on Tuesday. Yes, as in four days ago. It came about through a range of unusual circumstances and has really had me thinking about…
The Musician: Part III
Catch up on part I and part II. This is the last part. But it will be long. Katherine’s birth had a profound effect on me. The reality that Mike was gone forever, never to know his beautiful granddaughter, cast a shadow over what should have been simply a joyous event. I was devastated thinking of this little girl growing up without Mike’s…
From Three Years
This weekend marks three years since that terrible day. Three years since I lost my best friend and the love of my life. Suddenly. Without warning. I have also now lived the same amount of time without him as I shared with him… and going forward will mean increasing that gap. I remember dreading this day constantly through the first year. I…
Making It To The Top
Tomorrow, the day after this posting, marks the first anniversary of my beloved husband’s death. I can hardly believe it is true. One year. It feels like yesterday. It feels like a lifetime ago. So much has changed since he died. I have done many things, in spite of my crushing grief. I have visited my home neighbourhood in Indiana, and sat with…