Happy Sunday everyone!

I’m happy to report that I will be attending and presenting again at Camp Widow San Diego. The last Camp Widow that happened in March in Tampa, I was unable to go for financial and logistical reasons and I just could not make it work. Since it was literally the first Camp Widow Tampa I had missed being a part of since 2012 when I started going/presenting, it broke my heart into a thousand pieces to not be there. For the San Diego trip next month, I am able to go because A: I’m off work from my driving a student van job since there’s no school in summer, (so I don’t need to get time off), and B: a very generous and unexpected person came forward to help get me there, and I am beyond grateful for that gift.

Every Camp Widow experience is an incredible one, but the San Diego camp almost always happens during or right around the death-a-versary of Don Shepherd, which is July 13th, and for me, being surrounded by my widowed friends and in a place where great healing, laughter, and friendship happen, is an amazing feeling. This year, Ill be doing my comedic presentation again, as well as sitting at the table for Non-Religious widowed folks and offering support and comraderie (I cant spell that word correctly, apparently). I will be headed to San Diego on July 13th, and when I get there and maybe even on the plane ride itself, I will come up with some good ways to Pay it Forward for Don as I have done each year on that day. Maybe that night we will plan dinner somewhere in San Diego with a toast to Don and a giant tip for our server with a note about Don and who he was. Whatever we do, it will be special and I will honor him as I always do, and I will honor him with my continued work with widowed and grieving people. And I will sit in the sunshine and by the pool and talk and vent and listen and laugh with my widowed friends. I am so excited for that week to happen, AND, because its the week that my entire world changed and altered forever, I am also anxious about that week, and about the emotions that will inevitably happen when that day approached, and in the days after.

Being around my widowed friends is the absolute best place I can be.

Im looking forward to seeing old friends, and making some new ones.

And above all, Im so sorry for anyone who has a need to be at a place called Camp Widow – AND – there is no better or more healing place for you to be.