On February 5th, 2015, I wandered into a Hotel in Tampa, Florida, not quite sure if I was supposed to be there. I had lost Megan less than three months prior, and I hadn’t honestly accepted the fact that I was now a Widower. In the year leading up to it, I had spent more time sitting next to my dying wife than anything else. Like many of…
sharing
T.M.I.
It is very rare that one particular emotion takes the forefront of my mind for any longer than a few days. In general, there is a veritable melting pot of thoughts occurring at any given moment, ranging from sadness to joy and everything in between. Fear and confusion are tempered by confidence and determination. Of course, there are periods…
Killer Lonliness
Last week in my nutrition course we heard some amazing lectures about Blue Zones. If you don’t know what Blue Zones are, they are communities in various places around the globe that share common lifestyle and environmental factors that contribute to their populations being among the longest-lived and healthiest on the planet. These areas were first…
Words as Weapons
It’s no secret lately that I share my outlooks, experiences, and emotions with ruthless integrity, perhaps bordering upon over-sharing that information. Private anecdotes become public, once a week, as I write here. The quiet grumbles or “bad moods” that friends and family may see me in become soap-box seminars when it is in digital form…
Broken Hearts Club
For the past week, I have poured myself into the creation of my new grief workshop. It’s finally getting real now. Which is scary and exciting all at the same time. The fundraiser is over, and by the end, I raised $1700 to help with the creation of all of this. Amazingly, 95% of those donations were from widowed people. None of my close non-widow…
Perspectives from Camp Widow
Sarah and I have just returned from Camp Widow, in Tampa. This was our third camp together, and our first time returning to Tampa, where we met last year. If you’ve read her sunday post, you know that we had great expectations of what this Camp was going to be like, and for the first few days, it seemed as if everything we had planned for…
“It Isn’t Just Me”
It’s less than a week until Mike and I will be flying down to Tampa for Camp Widow. It’s so surreal to think of all that has happened in a year. Life is no less complicated than it ever has been, in fact more so for me. It’s a good complicated, but that doesn’t make it easy. I was talking with another widow friend the other day about this. Like me,…
Sharing Grief and Taking Steps
A lot has been going on this past week. Most notably, birthdays. I wrote last week about Shelby’s birthday and all the emotions it brought up for me. I don’t think it is any coincidence that my mom’s birthday was just a week after Mike’s daughter’s. And thusly, as happens most years, emotions are high. For years now, I have been…