Setting boundaries might be my widow superpower. Okay, maybe not a superpower but it’s a skill I continue to learn to flex. By nature, I’m a people pleaser who hates confrontation. However, losing Tony and experiencing everything that comes along with that loss changes a person. I don’t have the time or the capacity to […]
Widowed and Healing
Seeing Our Way Through
Last week I took my one and a half year old pup, Quint, to the Animal Eye Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, for an official vision assessment. Not surprisingly, the specialist confirmed that Quint’s vision was severely impaired due to detached retinas in both eyes and a tear in one. He also confirmed that his condition […]
Our Beating Hearts
It happened last night in a waking dream. The other day I was on a call about grief. In poetic prose, the speaker mentioned “hearing the beating of her heart.” She repeated that phrase at least three times. I wonder. . . is the beating of our hearts a reminder? Returning to her words, I […]
NNTR and other attempts to influence language
Image by i-am_nah on Unsplash Back in the 1980s, and possibly into the 1990s, I was quite an avid reader of two “wimmin’s magazines” – Company and Cosmopolitan. I just looked up to see if they still exist – they do. But I am curious how I ever found any of it interesting. Perhaps it […]
Art Reflects Life
It’s not surprising that things hit differently once we are widowed, but sometimes it’s still unexpected. In 2019, I excitedly ordered tickets to Hamilton when it was coming through on tour. Tony didn’t love the theatre like I did, but he put up with a show every now and then because he loved me. My […]
What Grows On
My last two posts have focused on the inner workings and transformation of house, home and human in the wake of profound loss. It was so gratifying to see my post, “Staying in Place”, written earlier this month recently featured on the Facebook Page of Soaring Spirits, International, and to see it appreciated by those […]
Camp Widow Serendipity . . .
… a story. It was September of 2022 in Denver at the local community college. A widow, finding no support options in Mississippi, arrives via a road trip where Soaring Spirits is offering a one-day program for widowed people. What was she thinking when she arrived? She did not know a soul and discovered the […]
Our Anniversary, Number 16 and Number 2
Friday would have been our 16th wedding anniversary and it’s the 2nd one he’s missed. The last two years I have intentionally been away from home on St. Patrick’s Day. Last year, the kids and I went to Florida to visit my parents. This year we spent a long weekend in the Ozarks with […]
Growing in Circles
Last Saturday I wrote about staying in place after losing a spouse or significant other. It isn’t easy to stay in a home that looks the same to everyone else, but doesn’t feel the same to the one who remains in that space alone. But many choose to remain in place, attempting to create a […]
Music to My Ears
I am not a fan of country music. However, bluegrass music is a guilty pleasure. I admire the technical skill required to play as fast and as clean as its finest practitioners. I like the twangy two, three or four-part harmonies, collectively referred to as high lonesome harmony. The improvisational character of bluegrass reminds me […]
How Lucky Are We?
The Wonder of a Camp for Widowed People (the sequel) It is truly a wonder that a camp for widowed people exists! In October 2021, after I attended my first camp, I wrote about it here. This is the sequel. Camp Widow is a safe place created by widowed people for widowed people. A place […]
My Blogiversary
This post marks my one-year anniversary as a writer for the Widow’s Voice. 52 weeks of sharing my journey with fellow widowed people and our support networks that follow this blog. There are weeks I start to write this and I’m not sure what direction it’ll go. Other times, I know exactly what has been […]