Love and loss are the great unifiers. Later in life the family seems to only get together for weddings and funerals. The most interesting part of my grief is how separated and alone I felt even though I was surrounded by love and support. I was kept separate from the rest of life by the […]
Widowed and New Love
This Life. THIS One
Photo of Lac de Lamoura, French Jura I have been doing some reading, learning and re-working on Narrative – aka the story/ stories I/we tell – whether to ourselves or to others. Narratives are potentially powerful vehicles for life, living, how we show up in the world, choices we make. When we become conscious of […]
Just how do we ever do this?
Image by Sarah Treanor on www.streanor.com This is my 104th piece of writing for Soaring Spirits International, which means I have been writing here for exactly 2 years. A piece a week. And sometimes I write more frequently on my own personal blogsite. I had been widowed for over two years, and had lost my […]
I am beginning to see what you’ve lost
Photo my own – Andorran Pyrenees I am just back from three weeks holidays spent with Medjool. It’s been lovely. Refreshing. Renewing. Most of the time we were walking in the Pyrenees, east to west, heading from the Mediterranean sea towards the Atlantic ocean. We walked for about 12 days with a few rest days […]
Self Love (take2)
Learning to fiercely love ourselves might be the greatest and most important love affair of our lives.
(Go on, read that again. Take a moment. Let it sink in.)
Yep. As widowed people, it is up to us to master love in a new way. We have lost the physical touch, and the voice of our beloved; but we still have the blueprints of their love imprinted on our skin and in our Souls. We know how to give and receive love because of them. So, now we must craft a way to love on ourselves when our lovers are no longer here to do this for themselves.
The Grief Dating Game
Well I guess we should just talk about it. Having to even think about dating again after Clayton passed away completely sucks. Dating is hard enough as it is but adding on being widowed, gay and living in the south is a hot mess. There are like 3 gay guys here. Two of them are […]
Three-Way Pact
Image by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash What does someone, who wants to believe in the spirit world, and believe that we are souls having a human experience, do, when she has a “meh” experience with someone claiming to connect with spirits of loved ones who have died? She finds another spirit whisperer. There are good […]
When “ex-” means alive
Something I noodle over from time to time, is the weirdness of the word “ex-“ when prefixed to another word. Like “ex-boyfriend” or “ex-lover” or “ex-wife”. The “ex-“ invariably means “alive”, and not dead at all. But sometimes, “ex-“ means well and truly dead. Anyone with a modicum of British culture (and more than a […]
The Day After
On July 25, 2008, Boris and I went to the beach. It was pretty romantic (as romantic as 17-year olds can be). We kissed and he asked me to be his girlfriend. We’d been friends for a couple of years by then. I didn’t agree to be his girlfriend until months down the road, but […]
Road Test
After Robyn informed me that her granddaughter had been selected to perform the national anthem at a Major League Baseball game, I took steps to secure very good seats close to home plate with an excellent vantage point of both the field and her granddaughter. Just before game time a young woman emerged onto the […]
Discharging Guilt
Main image by Callum Skelton on Unsplash One of Julia’s best friends, whose family asked me very directly, some six months after her death, never to contact them again, turned up unexpectedly at my door about 10 days ago. The door was wide open, and I only knew she was there because of the dog’s […]
Navigating New Terrain
Photos my own I just re-read last week’s post to see if I had mentioned “Orienteering” and saw that – oddly – I hadn’t. However it was a feature underlying that piece of writing. Orienteering is where I had been with my parents, in Leucate, when I came across “Ed’s Feather” on 22nd May. Orienteering […]