Tomorrow my daughter Rachael-Grace and I leave on our 6 month Nothin’ But Love tour. It will be quite an experience for both of us, filled with every emotion of the alphabet as we honor and remember my husband/her dad, meet people along the way and hear their stories, offer workshops to women around the country and, well, who knows what else. …
widow
Energy Force
Do you ever have those moments, where you can’t really explain why or how, but you just know that the person you lost whom you loved most, is nearby, or in the room with you? It is more of a feeling really – rather than something that can be analyzed or broken down. Sometimes it is inside the gust of wind that whispers by on a cold, crisp autumn…
Worth It
Life marches on so relentlessly. Dave’s memory fades as time passes. The way to make his memory stay clearer would be to pull out his pictures regularly and talk about him constantly. Doing these things can be comforting, but for me, they’ve also been incredibly painful. I talk to him still. I think about our life and our love. I look at pictures…
The Accidental Mother
“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…
A Widowed Status
Today I changed my relationship status on Facebook from “married” to “widowed”. I have been staring at that line on the page for many long months now. For whatever strange reason, it has given me great comfort to see it posted this way. Facebook may be a silly, meaningless network in many respects, but that status was still not something I could…
Seeing Strength
Chuck’s first anniversary just passed. We had a remembrance for him and danced for the love he left behind for all of us. But I also needed, somehow, to mark this past year in a very personal way that was about me and who I am now and who I’m becoming. Who I want to be for the rest of my life. Thinking about it became a spiritual mediation…
“I’m Okay”
“Don’t lie” shouted my step-dad from the other side of the room. This exchange happened while my Mum was in ICU in April 2008. My dad called to check up, and we had our auto-pilot introductory exchange. My step-dad called it for what it was. My step-dad also said during this time, “Never get married. Loosing a spouse sucks”. Well…
Spoons
Why do I keep expecting to be someone who hasn’t been through what I have? Why do I have these ridiculous expectations? Why do I feel less than because I’m so changed? Maybe it’s because I don’t want to be disabled by this tragedy, but I am anyway. I try not to use it as an excuse for my failures, but sometimes I forget that I am not as I…
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…
A Farewell Toast
It’s come. The time for me to step away as a writer for Widow’s Voice and let another share their life with all of you…to heal and learn in new ways and see things from another’s view. This moment was inevitable, as the only permanence in life is impermanence (as we all know too well…hence us being here), yet I want to share a bit of what it…
Secret Universe
The other day, I was watching the Yankee game, and the Yankees were playing at home, against the Seattle Mariners. Now, if you know anything at all about baseball or the Yankees, you might know that Robinson Cano left the Yankees at the end of last season, and signed on with the Mariners. It is complicated and has to do with contracts and…
A Long Strange Trip
I lost my husband on February 17, 2013. Mike had a heart attack in his sleep; he was 59. I was about a month away from my 45th birthday, and we were a few months away from our 14th wedding anniversary. I found him that morning. It was the single most shocking and horrible thing that’s ever happened to me. The past 439 days have been the longest,…