*Content warning: discussion of suicidal ideation/suicide and psychiatric hospitalization July 4th is one of those holidays that maybe you wouldn’t expect to be grief-y, but for me it is. Maybe it is more trauma-related rather than grief. Anyway, I thought if anybody would understand, it would be fellow widows and grievers. So, I thought I […]
Widowed Memories
Both / And
Both/And thinking [the opposite of either/or thinking] recognizes the folly of assuming that the new will totally supplant the old. Seeing with Both/And eyes recognizes that two opposite realities can be integrated. Adapted from Daniel Burrus at Burrus Research Today marks two months and two weeks since my beloved, Daniel Paul Neff, took his last […]
Levels in Life
Clayton, I gave the bike away. The one you gave me for Christmas. I was going to ride it to work but life. Right? You got sick. I needed to have my car so I could get back to you as fast as possible each of every “our last days” and then you died – […]
Your Touch (edited 2021)
Touch has helped bring me further present. It has helped reawaken me to the moment I am living in. Touch has resuscitated me in ways that nothing else can. Touch has given me the air I need when I was struggling to breath life back into myself. For me, touch has been healing in a new a different ways.
Touch has brought me back in touch with my humanness. I have allowed myself to acknowledged that I am still alive. And, because I draw breathe, my skin still hungers for the touch of another human being. Touch in and of itself is just that. It is not love, but it is something. And, sometimes a nebulous thing is really a big deal.
The Care Griever
Summer has hit on the beautiful stretch of Florida beach I call home. The area is buzzing with tourists and that means I’m hanging close to home for the busy season at work. My career is animal care. This week I had friends staying just a bit to the east of me about an hour […]
FIRST STEPS
Author’s Note: Thank you, Alison, for your warm welcome last week. You will be greatly missed here and I will join others in following you at http://anodysseyoflove.com/ to keep up with your adventures and new endeavors. Hope we meet up somewhere in the future. Thank you for sharing your love for Chuck so beautifully. xo~Kathie […]
My Road to Return
I have been having a near death experience. You know, where your life flashes in front of you, all the memories, sights, sounds and smells. That rewind reminder, which puts your whole past into a present perspective. No, there wasn’t an accident or anything sudden, my near death experience has been almost undetectable. How so? […]
The Box (Part Two)
Lee kept her wedding box at the top of her closet, which I had been in the process of reclaiming from her when I found it. I say her wedding box because she was not keeping it for our mutual benefit. I did not know it existed. I opened the lid and looked inside the […]
See You Down the Road~
To all of you, My community here… To Michele Neff Hernandez, for responding to the email I sent her after reading a Widows Voice blog in my newsfeed and deciding that I wanted to be one of the weekly writers. She called me to get acquainted, and then offered me Wednesday’s space to voice my […]
Finding Change
I’ve written about finding coins before and there was a long time I didn’t find any. This week it seemed everywhere I turned there was a penny. I think I found 8 total and 3 in just one day. They go in my pocket, I forget until later and it’s like I’ve found them all […]
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 […]
Full Moons and Memories~
I danced under the full moon tonight. It was the Super Flower Blood Moon and I was on the beach in North Carolina. The air was balmy, the breeze whispering on my skin, and the ocean waves rolled back and forth easily. It was perfect. In those moments my heart held all the nights and […]