One night last week G and I snuggled up on the couch for a little mid-holiday chaos downtime. We scrolled through the on-demand movie selections and settled on Nanny McPhee Returns. The original movie was really cute so we were looking forward to it.The setting of this movie is WWII England. The story consists of a mom and three kids struggling to…
widowed holidays
I Had A Dream
I had a dream. Well, first of all, just having a dream is significant for me. I can count the number of dreams I have had since Michael died on one hand. As with most dreams, there was no significant sense of time or place. In my dream I was returning home, which actually wasn’t my home. What was disturbing was that someone had stolen our bed. At…
All I Can Be Is Who I Am
Pallas was assigned this book in school. I would read sections of it to her. The first time I read the section below out loud, I could not finish it. I was sobbing as Pallas watched me curiously. Mau had put into words the way I feel about being a widow. I hope you will read the entire quote, for nothing I have read has fully encompassed what…
way better.
after complaining non-stop about how much i hate the holidays, something interesting happened this year… i suppose i could wait until the end of the post to tell you that i actually enjoyed this one, but why keep you in suspense? so here’s why this one didn’t suck… i watched as my california girl fell deeply in love with a climate few can…
Happy Different New Year
It happened. I actually made it through a holiday without being bitter. Now let me be clear, it doesn’t mean I didn’t feel sad or have the streaming video of memories run through my brain at different times, but it wasn’t bitter. For the first time in 6 holiday seasons, I didn’t have flashes of envy and moments of evil thoughts towards families and…
Canary In a Coal Mine
I feel like a canary in a coal mine. The sadness being the air that I sometimes think will kill me. Ezra age 1.75 with Ricki (with a dad) Ezra 8.75 with Ricki (without a dad) All week long the sadness has been spillozing out of me: hovering above me like my own personal little dampener, echoing at the end of my laughter, pushing through my…
Stocking Full of Memories
****This is a re-post from last year, but still one of my favorite moments in seeing the spark reignite in my family, as if the light had been turned on and they looked past his death and forward into his life. I’ll update next week on what gift they made/got for him! Merry Christmas**** Last Christmas my family started incorporating Michael back…
Christmas together
Tomorrow is the day that we have all been building up to in the last few months. I am sure that, like me, you are overwhelmed, tired and emotional. Preparing for this day is, at the best of times, exhausting…..but alone, it seems insurmountable.Please remind yourself to breathe deeply. To be gentle with yourself and to allow peace into your…
“You Should Be Happy” …..
…. is what someone told me last night. Actually, the entire sentence was …. “All of your children are home. You should be happy.” I felt like I had been slapped in the face. I was on the phone, explaining to this person, through tears, that I was feeling sad. And that sentence was the response I got.Most people would probably agree with that…
Wrapped in the Warmth
The holiday season is on me – not upon me, but really ON me – like a rash…I’m totally covered up. 😉 I’m not complaining, it is the fun things that are burying me, too many parties, too many friends, too much love. Clearly you can never have too many friends or too much love. My cup is Niagara Falls.This year is a different one from the previous…
Holiday Feelings
I just returned home for an early Christmas celebration with my extended family. This is somewhat of a novelty, and we now live close enough to be a part of these type of celebrations on a regular basis. I had a good time, and love my family, but I did need to get in the right type of space to handle it.Earlier in the week I wrote about this on my…
Teamwork
Our family received an amazing, unexpected Christmas gift of a very cool new TV. This weekend we went about shifting, rebuilding, figuring out cable connections, and placing the new gadget in the place of our old big screen. Somehow amidst the chaos, the daunting task of moving the old machine out to the garage ended up happening when the…