This was me, back in 2009. The week Drew and I began dating, we jumped out of a perfectly good airplane. It was a pivotal experience for me… and changed my beliefs in myself and how I dealt with risk and fear in my life. I have always been a cautious person, but every so often, I discovered after this day, I am able to make some pretty big leaps.
widow
No Magic Answers
I wish there was a magical device that would tell me exactly the right decisions I should be making in my life. But there is not. Without Mike as my partner and sounding board, I feel especially in the dark about making the right choices for myself. I feel very let down, in a way. I had thought I had made that most important decision of one’s…
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…
Getting Old Sucks…
…but it’s better than the alternative. At least that’s what they say. I’m not sure who they are. They probably have never been widowed and had to live with the idea of getting old without our spouses, when we hadn’t planned on it… and they are definitely not being specific enough. Who wants to live a long life if you’re sick and…
Upon This, I do Insist~
I wonder, frequently, when grief changed from a normal, human response to the death of a loved one, to a condition that, seemingly, must be gotten through (with all due speed, thank you very much for your consideration), with clinical protocols assigned to it? When did grief get designated as complicated and unhealthy and uncomfortable and…
Growing Me Up
Many of you know, in my “chapter two” or whatever we’re calling it… I relocated my life from Texas to Ohio last fall, to start a new beginning with Mike and his 9 year old daughter, Shelby. This summer it will be 4 years since Drew died, and this is the first relationship I’ve been in since that horrible day in the summer of 2012. There…
Swimming with Sharks
So my stepdaughter calls the other day – the one who lives here in Kona near me – and tells me she went out on a boat trip with a group of people and they decided to go pretty far out to see what interesting creatures they might find. When they are way out there they all get into the water. She says they did see two bottlenose dolphins, which is…
Passion from Pain
In just 3 days my fundraiser for the Meaningful Making e-course will be complete. In the past month and a half, I have raised over double my goal to begin work on making this online workshop. It will be geared towards those grieving, with the premise that students will use a combination of creative acts and storytelling in order to express their…
The Lows
It’s been a hard week. On Saturday I finally received notification from the courts with the date of the preliminary hearing on my foreclosure mediation. I’ve been saying how I’m going to be ok with this whole situation but it’s been much more emotional than I thought it would be. It’s the beginning of the end of something, one way or another. And…
This Carrying~
A dear friend and Air Force widow sister said to me last weekend, in response to my endless questions to her about this grief (she’s 6 years out), and time frames and, oh, you know, everything…she said this to me, and I’ve reflected on it in the days since. It isn’t that it goes away. We just get stronger, and we carry it differently.Such…
The Landscape of Love after Love
I’m writing you this morning from the bed of a roadside motel in West Virginia. The walls inside are all wood, the entire place looking like a big log cabin. It’s cozy feeling, with ruffled curtains, checkered blue and white bedspreads and warm corner lamps. I’ve woken up in a good mood, which I am infinitely grateful for, and hoping I can…
My Life With Grief
I write a lot about how strange and even unrecognizable my life is now. I can’t explain exactly how I got here, but I can tell you a little about what it’s like, just over three years after my husband died. I wake up every morning thinking of Mike. Reminders of him are everywhere in my house, on this island, and in my heart and mind. So in…