Hi all, I’m filling in for Kelley today since she is at Camp Widow Toronto. She’ll be back with us next week! Until then, I’m sitting down to write who-knows-what to you, on the fly. I suppose the first thing that comes to mind right now is community. It’s been on my mind all morning. Not only am I missing Camp Widow Toronto, and all the…
Widowed Community
Missing Two Worlds – But Going Back to One
I’m writing this from an AirBNB apartment in the heart of New York City, a loooong way from my home in Brisbane, Australia. I flew out here for a holiday with a good friend (and fellow widow) after attending Camp Widow in San Diego last weekend, and we’ve been having a wonderful time. This was my third Camp Widow and while Kelly Lynn spoke about…
Still Healing, Still Growing
I’m sorry for the late post, I’m at Camp Widow in San Diego this weekend and while I usually post by 5pm Saturday when I’m in Australian but I forget that with the time difference here in the US, my deadline is midnight Friday! It’s been a very different Camp Widow experience for me so far. For the first time, I’m here with four of my Aussie…
The Family I Never Knew I Needed
I spent last weekend in Melbourne with about a dozen very dear friends. These women have only been in my life for a couple of years now, however it feels like I’ve known them my whole life. They see my soul, in its most bare and vulnerable state, a way that people who have known my most of my life will never understand. These are my widow…
Broken Hearts Club
For the past week, I have poured myself into the creation of my new grief workshop. It’s finally getting real now. Which is scary and exciting all at the same time. The fundraiser is over, and by the end, I raised $1700 to help with the creation of all of this. Amazingly, 95% of those donations were from widowed people. None of my close non-widow…
Perspectives from Camp Widow
Sarah and I have just returned from Camp Widow, in Tampa. This was our third camp together, and our first time returning to Tampa, where we met last year. If you’ve read her sunday post, you know that we had great expectations of what this Camp was going to be like, and for the first few days, it seemed as if everything we had planned for…
Reminders from Grief
Things are coming to a close here in Tampa this morning. We expected it to feel exciting to return back here a year later… except this time, so many things have gone wrong. The pool at the hotel has been closed, creating some difficulty to finding quiet places to talk with fellow widows. On Friday, we looked at the time wrong and missed the…
Camp Widow Lite
It’s been over a year since I attended my first Camp Widow. In less than two weeks, Sarah and I will be travelling to Tampa again to attend this year’s installment. I’d be remiss to say that we weren’t incredibly excited. Not only do we get to see, converse, and connect with widowed friends that we don’t regularly see otherwise,…
What does a Widow Look Like?
Today I met up with a couple of my dear widowed friends who I’m working with on a project to support widowed people. During our discussions, we spoke about how we will need some photographs of widowed people to use in our materials and started brainstorming how we can depict widowedhood – and in particular, a widowed community – with images. …
One of Many
Before I lost my husband to depression, I was so unaffected by the word ‘suicide’. The word itself and casual references are everywhere in our society. In the lyrics of popular songs and common terms of phrase; it pops up unexpectedly in movies and tv shows and it features in art work, like Banksy’s ‘suicidal butterflies’. I’m ashamed to…
The Loneliness of Grief
There have been a few instances over the past week or two where I’ve opened up to people and shared a grief-related feeling only to have them either change the subject or ignore me. Approaching the 2 years and 4 month mark, I’m very familiar with this experience. As soon as that initial period of sympathy expires, whether it be a few weeks or a…
Inspiration
At work the other day I was chatting with one of the young ladies who works at the coffee shop across the way. I had mentioned my late husband in conversation and this girl, young enough to be my daughter, immediately expressed her sorrow for me and went on to tell me about her beloved stepfather who died five years ago. She said he had been her…