I was contacted by a long time friend this week asking for resources for a widow client he was working with. I am sure many of us widows are asked similar questions, or asked if we would be willing to talk with someone who is recently widowed and may need to connect with another widow. […]
Newly Widowed
The Power of Listening
on our path toward healing Part 1 of a series focusing on the benefits of a protected deep listening experience. What is non-judgmental listening? It’s an integral piece of creating an authentic community where everyone feels seen and heard. A safe place to grow. The gift of non-judgmental listening, within a safe space, changed my […]
I Saw You There
happy birthday, my love! your 75th year took me back to when we were first wed and your dad being 50 seemed so old! i teased him calling him “half-a-century” old and he reciprocated when I turned 25 by calling me a “quarter-century” old :)) writing this story reminds me of my luck […]
Widowhood Lessons
From a Labrador Retriever Awakened by my pet at 3:00am, I moan…. “Indy. . .” “Seriously?” A refrain I speak to my pet and my widowed life regularly. On par with life, her wee-hour pee evolves, occasionally, into something more complicated if a possum, racoon, or other nighttime critter makes an appearance. This […]
The Call and Response
When Traveling the Path of Grief The path we each travel to make our way through the daily ins & outs of our grief is personal and unique. As widowed people, our paths are often similar, yet different. On August 28, 2025, my husband’s birthday comes round, yet again, marking 75 years since he arrived. […]
Ocean Beckons
With Deep Medicine During Dan’s illness and throughout his last days on earth, the ocean brought me comfort. Words fail to capture how much it helped me, but it was something about the immensity of the sea. Boundless immensity. Unfathomable depths. Powerful enough to kill and mysteriously gentle. Home to millions of sea creatures within […]
Standing Between Milestones
I’m Still Here The yearly calendar continues its dance. Just passed July 4th wedding anniversary and just ahead, in August, Dan’s birthday (tho not till the 28th). A footpath for grief? Or milestones on the journey? Who can say for sure what any of it means? Poetry says it best. I held my morning […]
Looking back . . .
. . . it was all fear. “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” –C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed An interesting phenomena when looking back to the early days of widowhood is that I see things now that I was unable to see then. Things I may or may not […]
How far have I come?
Where am I headed? The word journey is a funny word. It seems to speak of both time and distance. How far does one travel on the path of grief? Where exactly are we “going”? From 2021 to the present, my journey loosely followed this trajectory: –Year One was a fog; I went […]
Dull Weed-like Plants and Sunny Sunflowers
Can joy and loss coexist? The dry, brown, feathery stalks in this photo remind me of the dried up feeling of loss that sneaks up on me. Standing directly in front of the dry stalks, sunflowers pop up through the leafy green leaves. I ask: Have you no shame yellow-face-flowers? Can you not feel […]
Day in Review
On the 4th Year of Re-membering A Day in Review Writing this post is the last ritual of a day of re-membering the life of Dan Neff. Beloved husband, papa, and grandfather. Greatly missed by many. A good man. After an online workshop in the morning, I went to the cemetery to find our […]
Three Reasons
Why It Works A few of us drove to Palm Springs this week to view Camp Widow: The Documentary at the AmDoc Filmfest. In spite of the fact that two of us have been to camp several times, we both cried during the film. Our companion, who has never been to camp, went home after […]