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 […]
Newly Widowed
Missing our Papa on Father’s Day
What happens on Father’s Day for the family whose Papa has passed on to another dimension? Is there a way to connect from afar? When my dad passed away in 1994 I wondered, with my siblings, how we could live in a world where he was missing. Each child whose father–or special person–has passed on […]
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 […]
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 […]
Betwixt
With the approach of summer and a substantial number of folks now being fully vaccinated, my sense is that at long last life might be “normalizing,” even if the continued use of masks in some quarters serves as a stark reminder that normal life tomorrow could look different. Imagine awakening one fine Spring morning to […]
Untitled and Off the Cuff
As many, if not most readers will know firsthand, grief shows up in myriad ways, often unexpectedly. I have been a widower for less than one year now, but already I have melted down driving home from the grocery store, reviewing tax documents with my accountant in her office, stumbling upon a dusty file or […]
This Particular and Peculiar Sense of Non-being (Reboot)
Alison is on the road this week and won’t have access to internet so we’ve chosen this post from 2017 to share with you until she returns next week. Enjoy! There is a particular and peculiar loneliness of the sort that cannot be imagined for its’ overwhelming and enveloping totality, that strikes me when I […]
Arriving in Community
Until last Saturday, I had never been to a Camp Widow event. I watched as a team of dedicated, compassionate and talented people created a space for the LGBTQ widowed. Held at the beautiful Los Angeles LGBTQ center, was the first ever event for my subgroup in the widowed population. If you’ve attended an event, […]
Nightmares Now and Then
I’ve had some really weird and disturbing dreams the past week. The sort of dreams that don’t really relate to anything in my actual life but have lots of very stressful or strange things going on in them. In these dreams, nothing appears to relate to my actual life in any particular way. Nothing symbolic even seems to be obviously about my…
Understanding “Freedom”
The Fourth of July – All things summer right? It’s cookouts, pool, family, sunscreen and fireworks. All the freedoms you get living in the good ole USA. It’s funny how the word freedom is used. By definition, freedom means you are not enslaved or forced to act or be a certain way. You are not trapped. Of course, for the USA freedom means all of…
The Scariest Part of Surgery
This blog will be short because I had a lasik procedure this week and my eyes get tired quickly.I’ve never been one to be comfortable with eye stuff. I hate eye drops and the thought of contact lenses makes me cringe but I was so fed up with glasses that I decided to go through with the surgery and get it over with. As the day got closer, I got…
Defiantly Defined
So this blog is a bit different than I usually write. This week I’ve been obsessed with terminology. Have you ever stopped for a minute and thought about words? Where did they come from? How they got their meaning and if they fit? Well it hit me this week that I HATE the terms widow and widower. I think the definitions are ridiculous and need to…