Dear Dan, This week we reached another milestone, albeit not exactly a traditional one. On Tuesday, it had been 1000 days since I kissed you goodbye. The reason I know this is because I put a ‘countdown’ ap on my phone after you died, so I’d always know how many months, weeks or days since you’d been gone. Isn’t that a strange thing to want to…
aussie widow
Dreams Coming True
In my first post for this year I spoke about setting my goal for 2016. In this piece I wrote, “I’m sick of treading water, I want to start swimming again in 2016. I want to propel myself forward and feel like my life is moving ahead again. So this year I’ve chosen ‘growth’ as my mantra. It took me a while to settle on this word, because…
The Remnants of a Life
I recently wrote about my decision to move out of our family home and into a smaller apartment, better suited to my ‘single’ lifestyle. It will be a month or two until I actually make the move, however this week I started packing away things I want to put in storage and sorting out un-needed items to donate to charity or just throw in the…
The Home That Doesn’t Quite Fit Anymore
In the past two years and eight months since Dan died, I’ve toyed with the idea of moving out of our house a number of times. We bought our dream home in January 2013. We were married in June 2013 and I lost him to depression only six weeks later, in July. It’s a large, two-story house with enough space for a big family. It’s definitely too big…
Re-claiming a Simple Pleasure
DISCLAIMER: Post about alcohol When Dan died unexpectedly from depression, the PTSD had such an effect on my body, I couldn’t tolerate alcohol. A glass of wine or two and I’d either be catatonic and sleepy or violently ill. This was probably a blessing in disguise at the time because believe me, I tried to drink – I would have LOVED to drink.
Ready to Step Up
I’m posting my Widows Voice blog a bit late today. I’m scheduled to publish it at 5pm every Saturday, Australian time, which is midnight Saturday over in the USA (I live in the future, you see!). I’ve been late before but never missed a week, however as my scheduled time rolled around yesterday, I felt so overwhelmed with everything I had…
Visiting with Old Memories
This Wednesday marked my husband’s 37th birthday. This was the third I’ve had to mark without him and surprisingly, I found it to be somewhat different to the past two. I woke up thinking about what we might have been doing if he were still here. On his last birthday, his 34th birthday, I’d snuck out of our room the evening before and…
Robbed of his 37th Birthday
This morning I woke up and was unexpectedly very teary. I’ve had a great week, I’ve been on holidays, started studying again, enjoyed some really happy moments with family and friend and feel like I’m in a good place. Yet here they were, the sadness and the anger, paying me an unwelcome and un-invited visit. Then I remembered, this coming…
A Different Experience of Missing Him
I’m interstate at the moment celebrating a dear friend’s 40th birthday. She lives on the other side of the country (I live in Brisbane, Queensland and she lives in Perth, in Western Australia). I’ve been here to visit a number of times now, it’s a great opportunity to have a holiday and see another part of Australia while catching up with my…
What does a Widow Look Like?
Today I met up with a couple of my dear widowed friends who I’m working with on a project to support widowed people. During our discussions, we spoke about how we will need some photographs of widowed people to use in our materials and started brainstorming how we can depict widowedhood – and in particular, a widowed community – with images. …
I Want To Share This With Him
It’s been two-and-a-half years in and the grief can still sneak up and surprise me in ways that I’m not expecting… I recently decided to go back to university and do some further Post Graduate study in my career of public relations. I took a step back when Dan died unexpectedly from depression but a few months ago I started feeling ready to…
Validating my Truth
During the week, I was rushing down a busy street while on my lunch break from work, when I passed a former colleague. He called out to me and we stopped to quickly catch up. I hadn’t seen this man for around three years, since he moved to London for work. As is often the way with old workmates, they plan such an integral role in your…