As you may have read, Sarah got a “tattoo” on Saturday. It’s a simple henna tattoo, with a complex and meaningful backstory. A sun, symbolizing her dad, a moon, symbolizing her mother, and seven stars, symbolizing Drew. These three celestial objects imprinted on her forearm remind her of a connection to those she’s lost. While not…
Widowed and New Love
How I Do Birthdays
So this is how his birthday went this year… I woke up, and actually did not even remember it was his birthday for maybe an hour or two. After I’d dropped the kiddo off at school, I ran to the grocery store for a few things. And that’s when I remembered. Only it didn’t hit me like a ton of bricks. It didn’t stop me in my tracks. It was…
Finding Power when Powerless
“Sometimesthe most important part of the journey is just deciding to go.” I read this quote the other day in a book and I liked it. I tend to spend too much time overthinking things and not enough time just doing them. So this was refreshing to read. But it also got me thinking about widowhood, and decisions. And how much of the difficulty…
Paradox
Anniversaries are, in general, a prompt for looking back. They’re an annual reminder to be reminded of the past. While oftentimes, an anniversary is also a milestone, it still remains that, simply put, an anniversary measures the passage of time. They don’t really MEAN anything to widows. Our person is neither more, nor less dead on…
When Love Wins out Over Fear
It’s been a little over a month now since Mike proposed. I’ve had a few hard triggers. Trying to think about planning a wedding has been tough at first. The last time I was going to marry someone, he died before we ever got to the big day. He died before we ever even got into the true planning. So needless to say, that part of me that remembers…
Superbowl Sunday and a Brand New Life
The year was 2005, and it was a cold day in February. I looked out the window of my New Jersey apartment, which sat on the Hudson River. NYC looked back at me. I put the coffee pot on, and started making the meatballs and sauce. My Nana Mary’s lasagna recipe, with bow tie pasta and meatballs and ribs on the side. I had made it for Don the…
Whatever
I’m not entirely sure what I’m supposed to be feeling, now moving towards year 5 since Megan’s death. Shelby is a preteen (and it certainly shows), and moves ever so closer to wanting to spend time with her friends versus us. Her brother is married with a growing family of his own, with two sons that Megan never got to meet. One of our…
Don’t Die
“Don’t Die” It’s an instruction that Sarah has given to me as I walk out the door to work more times than I can count. Sometimes, it’s fairly innocuous. Other times, it’s said with a fervent, if not pleading “PLEASE don’t die today”; usually after waking up from a particularly emotional dream. It’s not a “tic” or…
Risk Assessment
It has been almost a month since I last posted on here. Sometimes, life can get in the way of all of our commitments to others. Between the holidays, the busiest time of year at my work, travel, and budgets, sharing my weekly thoughts and anecdotes about life after becoming widowed took a significant back-burner. But the primary reason I…
First Weeks of Being an Engaged Widow
We’re a week into the new year, and I haven’t had a lot of time to sit down and reflect. Holiday travel definitely takes a lot out of you and we’re only just beginning to get settled back in at home. The thing that I am reflecting on right now as I write to you is mostly, my gratitude, and the big event I wrote about last week – Mike…
One Box
It has been 7 and a half years since my beautiful husband Don Shepherd’s sudden death. About 18 months ago, I found new and wonderful and beautiful love. Somewhere in the first few months of the relationship with my new love, the topic of “Don’s things” came up. I think I was the one who brought it up. We were in my bedroom talking, or kissing,…
Building My Wings
It seems I made it to adulthood with a rather enormous stack of self limiting beliefs to shuffle through. For a lot of years, I wasn’t even aware of it. I was so used to these beliefs that, in my mind, they were just truths. I always had all my ducks in a nice, neat row… and they were all well-fed and had an ample security system around them at…