“Happy Mother’s Day!” the waiter says to me, followed by saying that he isn’t sure who is or isn’t a mom so he just says it to all the women coming in to eat lunch at the restaurant today. I laugh at his over-kindness, and say thank you. But then, as he walks away… the feeling sinks in. Now, normally I’m very good at keeping the whole children…
sarah treanor
The Dream & The Death
Today is a very big day. In just a few hours, I will be loading up nine of my large framed photos and delivering them safely to the local hospital for my first solo art exhibition. It is a lifelong dream come true. And mostly, it has been incredible. I told my counselor the other day that it feels like a dream… that it feels like I got dropped…
Happy Birthday
Yesterday was my fiance’s 30th Birthday. I don’t say “would have been” because it doesn’t make me feel like I am allowed to still celebrate it when I saw that. So instead, I say that it was, and is, the day he turned thirty. Even if he isn’t here physically, saying it that IS his birthday helps me have permission to still celebrate.The morning…
Weighing the Days
Yesterday was a hard day. Exactly a week until Drew’s birthday, perhaps I don’t remember how hard it was last year… but I could swear it’s hitting me harder this year. My body seems so much more aware of the lack of his body, but also just the feeling of him in the space is far more distant now. I downplayed that first sentence… it was a…
Camp Widow
Since I lost my fiancé almost 2 years ago, I have been acutely aware of how uncomfortable my very presence makes people at times. I talk about it less and less on Facebook, and even with my closest friends and family. It turns out people really don’t like being reminded of death. Who knew? I’ve started to feel like I am carrying around some bad…
Emotional Hangovers & Bachelorettes
It’s actually Monday as I write this… I’m heading out this week for Camp Widow, where I will likely meet many of you! So I decided to get this one in early. I’m *mostly* over the worst hangover of my life, which was due to a bachelorette party I attended on Saturday. Yup, you read that correct. I went to a bachelorette party… my first…
A Beginning in the End
A lot of us talk about various times during this horrible journey where a shift begins to happen. It’s nothing concrete or tangible, it may not even be something we can easily define… all we know is that something has changed in us and the way we view what has happened to us. That is the shift.Since the new year began, I’ve been feeling as…
Signs of Flight
Since Drew was a helicopter pilot, helicopters and anything to do with flying are always the biggest signs I get from him. I even found a tiny toy helicopter in this shack on the island of Barbados last spring while vacationing there with his family. It had washed up on the beach and the guy collected it to sell in his shop. No joke!And just a few…
To Be Changed
Last night just before going to bed, for some reason I felt called to go back through some really old journal entries from the years leading up to when I met Drew. I don’t always pay attention to those little cues, but last night for whatever reason I did. I smiled to read some of the entries about our first days together… about how safe and…
Journaling through the Emotions
I’ve been going back over a lot of my old journal entries lately and picked one out to share a part of. For some years now I have been doing this inner-child dialogue technique… Basically having a conversation with that deepest, most vulnerable (and sometimes most wounded) part of myself by asking her questions and allowing her to share until I…
Capturing our Stories
Today I read a beautiful article that really got me thinking. During a commercial photo shoot for a show on the Oprah Network – near the end of the shoot – one of the actors requested the photographer to take a few more shots for him. As he stepped back onto the backdrop, the actor began to sob. The photographer captured about a dozen or so shots…
The Blindside
I’ve been in a clay workshop for the past few days, and its mostly been a heck of a lotta fun. Each say we have worked with a different teacher, making sculptures, dinnerware, decorated tiles, and learning alternative techniques for firing clay (examples in the picture above!) It’s been a whirlwind of new and exciting creative ideas for me,…