With Mari’s departure on Thursdays, we’ll be featuring repeats from Mike’s posts over the years. Enjoy this piece, originally written in 2016. You don’t realize how important the little things are until you don’t have them. It could be something as simple as sitting on the couch, watching TV until you fall asleep with your partner, and…
Widowed
Long lost Pineapple Shorts
I’m laying in bed and I’m only 4 days away from heading to Hawaii. I post on Facebook about the trip. In the post I ask who am I going to see there? Within moments of me posting, I hear something slide and fall in the bedroom closet. Roan (my dog) gets off the bed and goes to the closet, looks at me, walks in and out and walks over to me. He…
Farewell 2019 and Readers
I am finally saying goodbye to another year without my Husband. For me, 2018 and 2019 have been the most difficult years of my life. As I close 2019, I want to let you all know that I will be no longer writing blogs anymore. For 2020, I need to focus on my health, my child and trying to get back to who I once was. In all honesty, my health is…
A New Year 2020
Soon it will be my fourth New Year’s Eve without Mike. Huh. Wow… I don’t even know what any of this means. Everything and nothing all at once I suppose. No matter the year, I miss him and this will not change. My grief is evolving with time, but the missing is always there. It is more tolerable now, but in my fourth year of widowhood…
Already A New Year without You
I’m halfway through this winter warfare others call “the most wonderful time of the year”. The annual arrival of the four holiday horsemen. Just as one battle ends another commences giving us barely enough time to heal the wounds and gather back the troops. Thanksgiving with grief in the gravy. Christmas’ hallmark heartaches. Now the…
The Ghosts of Christmas Past , Present and Future
Thanksgiving was a beast in itself but Christmas can be the kraken in unicorn’s clothing. I love parts of Christmas like the lights, smell of Christmas trees and giving others gifts. It’s the other parts – families gathering, couples under the mistletoe, Hallmark everything that always ends up like a fairytale…Tin was 1000% in with Christmas.
Feeling Numb
I can tell you as I am sitting here in my living room writing this blog, I am feeling numb. In the past two months, they found an irregular function with my heart, my house got hit by a tornado, and thankfully only knocked down a wall in my backyard. I had to get my roof redone and as they were putting in the new roof, a bunch of water poured all…
Bah Humbug
I am trying to get festive. I really am. But little things tick me off. Like Christmas decorations. Particularly the really garish ones. And the plastic snowmen. The ones in our house are okay. Right now, that’s the sum total of an undecorated Christmas tree. And fairy lights that never actually went down after Christmas 2017. Somehow they have…
A Christmas to Remember
You would think that becoming widowed just before the holiday season could make said holidays an overbearing mixture of grief, stress, and memories going forward. That remembering that first Christmas without Megan, watching a seven-year-old Shelby bounding down the stairs to a room in which her father was already bawling, would not be the ideal…
I Choose to Believe
A week ago I was given an opportunity at a big event to share with my essential oil community about inclusion, community and growth. It amazes me what has come into my life in the past year. Part of my oil journey is the loss of Tin. I share about him in every speech I give. I share about Soaring Spirits and I share about the widowed Facebook…
I Will Always Wonder
I know it’s not healthy to think about what could have been. But sometimes I let my mind wander and take a peek of the life we could have had if you had never had your accident. I know this can’t ever exist, but I will always wonder. I will always wonder if we would have grown old together. If we truly would have decorated our wheelchairs…
Self-Care, Help, and Letting in Comfort
I have been pondering comfort, self-care, and help – what each of them is, to me, and what makes one or other easier and/or more accessible than another. Here is where I am at. And no, I have done no Googling or other research into what each of them is. Just research in my own life and experience. They are oft-used terms in Griefland – wobbly…