“I dream of wandering” That was the simple, unpolished statement written upon my paper heart at Camp Widow. Sarah and I were a large part of the message release there…constructing the large heart, cutting out all of the smaller ones, mounting it in the banquet area, and being the first two to place our torn dreams in front of the rest of…
Widowed Community
A New Dawn
I’m writing this a bit late today, but for a very good reason. As I type this, Mike and I are driving back from Toronto. For the past few days, we’ve been enjoying the company of so many beautiful, brave people here at Camp Widow Toronto… some of who may be reading these words. If you’ve never been, I can assure you, this gathering of love and…
Ramble On
On February 5th, 2015, I wandered into a Hotel in Tampa, Florida, not quite sure if I was supposed to be there. I had lost Megan less than three months prior, and I hadn’t honestly accepted the fact that I was now a Widower. In the year leading up to it, I had spent more time sitting next to my dying wife than anything else. Like many of…
Grief Is A Funny Thing
Just when I find myself moving along a little more effortlessly and thinking, “I’ll be damned. I think I’ve got this handled” … it happens. WHAM! Grief jumps out of nowhere and slams me so hard in the chest that I find myself gasping for breath and thinking, “What the fuck just happened there?” (Or, “what the heck just happened there?” …
A Waste of Worry
Last week I was anxious and annoyed (raging, actually) over the seemingly endless list of things I thought I could not do without Ben. At the time, the top of my list of stressors was the fact that I was headed off to Camp Widow where I would be attending a Saturday night Masquerade Ball, and I realized there was no one to zip up my dress. It…
Killer Lonliness
Last week in my nutrition course we heard some amazing lectures about Blue Zones. If you don’t know what Blue Zones are, they are communities in various places around the globe that share common lifestyle and environmental factors that contribute to their populations being among the longest-lived and healthiest on the planet. These areas were first…
Stepping out of the Vacuum
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…
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…