Again My son surprised me when he seemed surprised himself when I said “I’m giving away Dad’s chair.” His face witnessed to his inner reaction. It was unexpected his desire to hold on to the recliner. It’s been four and a half years and I thought if one of the kids wanted it […]
Widowed and Healing
Redesigning Home
Recently I had the urge to make updates around the house. However, I lost my favorite handyman when I lost Tony. (Spoiler alert, it was him.) Hiring someone to do the work is intimidating. It’s more expensive than I’m used to since we used to just pay for the materials and he would do 95% […]
Early Firsts
I recently wrote about the many “firsts” I have experienced in life that happened with Lynn. It made me think about the “firsts” after Lynn, and the mixed feelings that often accompany these “first” experiences. There are the firsts that are more about grieving the lack / loss of Lynn’s presence. I remember the first […]
Standing Between Milestones
I’m Still Here The yearly calendar continues its dance. Just passed July 4th wedding anniversary and just ahead, in August, Dan’s birthday (tho not till the 28th). A footpath for grief? Or milestones on the journey? Who can say for sure what any of it means? Poetry says it best. I held my morning […]
Looking back . . .
. . . it was all fear. “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” –C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed An interesting phenomena when looking back to the early days of widowhood is that I see things now that I was unable to see then. Things I may or may not […]
How far have I come?
Where am I headed? The word journey is a funny word. It seems to speak of both time and distance. How far does one travel on the path of grief? Where exactly are we “going”? From 2021 to the present, my journey loosely followed this trajectory: –Year One was a fog; I went […]
Seasons of Change
And just like that, we say goodbye to June and hello to July. What a whirlwind of a month June was. I felt like I was holding on to the bumper of a car moving at 100 miles per hour. It was a month full of milestones, memories, and so so many emotions. Looking back […]
A Love Letter to Widowed People
in Riverside and Beyond Michele Neff Hernandez, SSI, and Marlene Huerta Frazer, Widow Goals, Inland Empire Do you ever have a “plan” that’s perfect and then you find that LIFE has it’s own plan? I sure do. When volunteering to host a screening for Camp Widow, I had a vision in my mind that […]
CAMP WIDOW the Documentary: “A love letter to resilience.”
This Monday presents the Awareness Observance of International Widow’s Day and also most fittingly the national debut of the documentary, CAMP WIDOW. I reached out to Michele Neff Hernandez, the CEO of Soaring Spirits International and the creator of the Camp Widow program to learn more about this groundbreaking project that followed a long and […]
Dull Weed-like Plants and Sunny Sunflowers
Can joy and loss coexist? The dry, brown, feathery stalks in this photo remind me of the dried up feeling of loss that sneaks up on me. Standing directly in front of the dry stalks, sunflowers pop up through the leafy green leaves. I ask: Have you no shame yellow-face-flowers? Can you not feel […]
Mysteries of the Future
In April, I started with a new therapist, and I’ve been seeing her consistently since our first session. Today we were discussing secondary losses towards the end of our session. Just as the bulk of my session was winding down, I hit on a new topic that was bigger than the 2 minutes we had […]
Take the Trip
I am currently on vacation in Hawaii, looking at the palm trees swaying, and it is reminding me of the vacation Lynn and I took with my parents, back to the Philippines in 2009. We have a ton of relatives back in the Philippines, and while I had not been there since the early 2000’s, […]