Terrible things happen to people every single day but not everyone experiences terrible things. Some get to float through life without fear, loss or a bigger view of the world. Lucky maybe? However, true gratitude often comes from true grief. There’s a mindset now that any inconvenience is a huge struggle and so many are […]
Widowed Milestones
Stains of the Heart
There have been moments this week where I’ve caught myself thinking more and more about the loss of my dad and Clayton. I had a friend from work pass away after being in the hospital. All I could think about was what his surviving wife was going through. Another coworker sadly lost his mother and […]
Sharing A Smile
I miss his smile. It was a gift he had share with me to hold in my memories. It’s been almost four years since I saw him smile in person. Sometimes I forget to remember those moments because he was so sick near the end that he didn’t have the energy to smile. It wouldn’t […]
WHAT IF . . .
. . . we keep telling our love stories? There is a beauty in love stories. We see it in rom-com’s like When Harry Met Sally. We see it in Marvel Films like WandaVision. Heck! we even see it in the nature stories of whale families and how they care for each other! Love, in […]
The Grief Graduate
It’s been almost 4 years since Clayton died. I was struck by that fact this week. I’ve been without him for as long as I was in high school. The biggest difference is that my schooling in sadness occurred much faster than K-12. Year 1 felt like being a scared kid starting up class in […]
Year Two Times Two
Sometimes I’m not sure what to write each week. When that happens (because it’s normal to not have a topic), I take it that the Universe wants me to just look back and see where I am verses where I was. So I decided to look back at the last blog I wrote two years […]
Be Brave
Being brave isn’t the absence of fear. Being brave is having that fear but finding a way through it. Bear Grylls Experiencing loss in the time of Covid is complicated. Times like these require some amount of bravery, either conscious or unconscious, to keep going. As does widowhood. Contemplating bravery is a helpful tool in […]
Filtering Out the Fiction
Moving from the apartment where I became widowed has had a lot of competing emotions. Taking down the photos that Clayton hung up and seeing just my dog Roan standing in our empty apartment hit me hard. Real life becomes more real in some pretty harsh, unexpected waves and ways. Worn out carpet where Clayton […]
A Flight of Stairs
Almost six years ago and three flights of stairs up, we thought our new apartment in this little beach down was part of Heaven. For 8 months I helped you walk up and down these stairs until up was to hard for the both of us. Four years after you, I stayed in our apartment. […]
A STRONG PRESENCE
. . . and a Christmas Story The longer I live the more I realize how different we are as humans. What matters to one is barely a blip on the radar screen to another. What one treasures can be opposite of what another would give their life to protect. My entire life, as long […]
Today I have lived 20,000 days
Picture by Debby Hudson on Unsplash I know, notice, or choose to find out, the weirdest things about dates and days. I love number patterns. I love that my birthday is 270367 and Mike’s is 270763. Same digits. A numerical dream. Or so I chose to believe. Just recently, we have seen a lovely date […]
The Magic of the Season
I remember the magic of the holidays when I was younger. Time went by at a much slower pace waiting for that one special night followed by a day of jolly and cheer. Christmas Eve we would spend with my mom’s side of the family surrounded by aunts, uncle, cousins and grandparents. Each year my […]