Since coming back from Camp Widow Toronto, the upcoming holiday season has been on my mind a lot. I met so many new widows in Toronto. So many who are enduring the horror of their first holiday season without their person this year. As I sat down this morning to write, I began thinking, just what could I share that might resonate with anyone out…
Widowed and Healing
Going With It
The big news is, we found a place to rent here in Kona that has agreed to the dogs. It’s only up the block, so moving should be relatively easy. It’s expensive…but thankfully my boyfriend is with us for all the support both emotional and financial that it will entail. It has not come easy. It took weeks for the owner to come around to us…
We Didn’t Win
My youngest daughter is 16. She was 13 years old when she found out her Dad was dying. She was 14 when he actually died. I’m sure it goes without saying that every moment of her life since the day she found out he was sick has been a challenge. A challenge that most adults would be unable to manage, and yet this girl manages. She is…
Vows
I take thee, to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness, and in health, until death do us part. If he only knew what those vows mean. He does though. He always will. Last Saturday, I stood as a groomsman at the very same altar where I was married to Megan.
Decisions, Decisions
Sometimes, you don’t make decisions. Sometimes, decisions are just made for you. Like that time my husband died. I definitely didn’t decide that. And as a result, a cascade of other decisions I didn’t make happened. I just had no choice in the matter. All the things you do in life, day-to-day or long term, doing any of those things without…
Tiresome Grief
I’m just so tired. Sitting here with all this week’s feelings, thoughts and words ping-ponging around my brain, that one just keeps rising to the top. Grief is a heavy, heavy stone to drag around, and I’m tired. That sinister companion has changed so much, not just in my daily life but how I think about life altogether. I’m been…
Finding Myself Somewhere New
Mindfulness has always been something important to me, in one way or another. Usually, art and creativity have been my way of being mindful – my form of meditation. In the first few years after Drew’s death, I created deeply mindful photographs which helped me reach that meditative space. I don’t think I knew it at the time, but they created a…
The Question to Ask our Pain
Five years ago this week, I turned 30. My fiance had died just 3 months before, suddenly, and I was a field of shrapnel spread out for miles upon miles. That week five years ago, I decided not to give up my 30th birthday. I decided instead to honor it, because I would only turn 30 one time and I still deserved honoring. With that, Drew’s mom and…
A Message from Before Beyond
“My husband and I have only been married 5 years, I need more time to show him how much I truly love him. I want my lifetime with him. I want the fighting, and loving. He has stayed by me though everything, even when it gets so frustrating I could give up. Though we both are frustrated by my disease, he has never let that break us. He won’t give…
An Honest Love Letter: Saint-Onge style
I was scrolling through my personal blog recently, because I like reading what I wrote while Ben was still alive. Re-reading my words allows me to remember certain days with clarity. For a moment I can close my eyes and feel myself back in my real life when Ben was alive. And even though those days were terrible for him (pain, chemo, radiation,…
Fear & Appreciation
For whatever reason, today, I have this fear that something horrible is going to happen, or that something horrible IS happening that I don’t know about. It may be all the horrible stuff going on with hurricanes and now earthquakes… the edginess that all of that upheaval in so many people’s lives. The anxiety that I had just a few weeks ago…
Always Surprise Yourself
I think one of the hardest things about losing people we love, is that in a way, we lose a part of our own history when they die. Or at least, we lose one of our living, breathing connections to that history. Without those connections to the history of ourselves, I’m learning it can be easy to get lost. I think this has been especially hard…