Well, no doubt about it, I’ve had a tough week. Following the birth of my best friend’s baby last weekend, which I assisted with, I knew it was inevitable that an emotional crash would follow such a confronting experience. Having a front row seat for someone else’s transformation into the role of mother was more difficult than I’d feared. …
Widowed
Death blows
I’ve been thinking about death a lot this week…how could you not. Not only do we have our own personal losses always dangling in our hearts, but when well known cultural icons pass away the whole world mourns for them and then it’s everywhere. David Bowie played such a huge role in my youth. He broke down barriers, broke new ground…broke…
Holding on Tightly~
In my heart, I’m carrying all the trauma from those 3 weeks when I went into auto pilot, (as we all do at such a time). Those 3 weeks where I was as present as could be to the best of my abilities as he and I said our goodbyes and my heart broke into pieces that were so huge and so small that they became invisible shards, but 3 weeks where I…
Changing of the Colors
I bought my house almost 11 years ago. It was our “starter home”, and Megan and I were married a month after we moved in. We did what most couples do. We painted the major rooms before moving in, and left some of the rooms for me to repair and remodel after we were situated. Megan had a style of her own, that I was, being the husband,…
Unraveling Grief: Things I’ve Learned About Letting Go
The other day I was filling out a workbook that I have done several times in January… called Unraveling the Year Ahead. It’s a wonderful workbook created by author, photographer and teacher Susannah Conway. This little booklet is filled with solid questions to get you to write down your reflections on the past year – release what you want to,…
Witnessing New Life
I’ve mentioned a few times in the past couple of months that my best friend and her husband were having a baby. Well, this morning, at 4:30am, their beautiful baby girl entered the world and I was privileged to be there to help. It was a long, sleepless, emotional and exhausting night and I’m struggling to find the words to explain both what an…
Myrtle
I sit on my porch a lot…in Hawaii we call it our lanai. The same table and chairs have been there for years and years since we bought the place in 2001…scratch that, one of our dogs broke our original glass table; the cheap, wooden one there now is one I got at Ikea when I lived in LA in the 90s….ok I’m going off on a tangent… Suffice…
Just when the Caterpillar Thought the World was Over
It has been an incredibly warm winter here in Ohio, one of the warmest on record. Christmas came and went with not only a lack of snow, but mud and rain; something we are not entirely used to in the waning days of the year. By no means is every Christmas white, but it is almost always cold. I can remember the weather final few weeks of the…
Entering the Cave of Fears
“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek” – Joseph Campbell I am starting to have a realization that my choice to restart pretty much ALL areas of my life since Drew died means that there is still a hell of a lot to rebuild and build anew. Probably way more than I even can understand right now. When he died, I quit my job and moved…
One of Many
Before I lost my husband to depression, I was so unaffected by the word ‘suicide’. The word itself and casual references are everywhere in our society. In the lyrics of popular songs and common terms of phrase; it pops up unexpectedly in movies and tv shows and it features in art work, like Banksy’s ‘suicidal butterflies’. I’m ashamed to…
Not Alone and Lonely
Even when I’m not alone at the end of the day, I’m still lonely for Mike. His space can just never be filled. I wrote that line weeks ago but couldn’t finish anything with it. I think because it seemed like a complete thought; that one sentence summed it up for me in so many ways. But since I’ve been back from my holiday travels and looking…
Happy New Year
I generally try to write my posts in advance, which gives me a bit of time to pore over them and change things up here and there before it goes public. This week, I did just that, writing a post about the five year anniversary of Megan’s lung transplant, which is Wednesday, the 6th, and what it meant to me. Then, at the eleventh hour, I…