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…
young widow
The Remnants of a Life
I recently wrote about my decision to move out of our family home and into a smaller apartment, better suited to my ‘single’ lifestyle. It will be a month or two until I actually make the move, however this week I started packing away things I want to put in storage and sorting out un-needed items to donate to charity or just throw in the…
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…
The Home That Doesn’t Quite Fit Anymore
In the past two years and eight months since Dan died, I’ve toyed with the idea of moving out of our house a number of times. We bought our dream home in January 2013. We were married in June 2013 and I lost him to depression only six weeks later, in July. It’s a large, two-story house with enough space for a big family. It’s definitely too big…
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…
Re-claiming a Simple Pleasure
DISCLAIMER: Post about alcohol When Dan died unexpectedly from depression, the PTSD had such an effect on my body, I couldn’t tolerate alcohol. A glass of wine or two and I’d either be catatonic and sleepy or violently ill. This was probably a blessing in disguise at the time because believe me, I tried to drink – I would have LOVED to drink.
How did I get here??
Do you ever get the feeling you’re living someone else’s life? I’ve been having these kind of out-of-body moments when I look around my small world and just for a flash, don’t recognize anything. It’s not any kind of serious psychological break, don’t worry – it’s just that moment when I think…how on earth did I get here?? I think…
Ready to Step Up
I’m posting my Widows Voice blog a bit late today. I’m scheduled to publish it at 5pm every Saturday, Australian time, which is midnight Saturday over in the USA (I live in the future, you see!). I’ve been late before but never missed a week, however as my scheduled time rolled around yesterday, I felt so overwhelmed with everything I had…
Trying to Treasure
I’m still working my way back into life on the island from the last two weeks I spent in New Orleans helping out my stepdaughter and her family. Two weeks of helping care for a four year old and a two year old with a newborn there as well pretty much knocks out everything else one might otherwise be doing or thinking about. Having never raised…
Visiting with Old Memories
This Wednesday marked my husband’s 37th birthday. This was the third I’ve had to mark without him and surprisingly, I found it to be somewhat different to the past two. I woke up thinking about what we might have been doing if he were still here. On his last birthday, his 34th birthday, I’d snuck out of our room the evening before and…
A story story
Mike was always at the forefront of new technologies… Ha now there’s a sentence which is surprised at having been strung together. Mike was certainly not the most adept at such things…probably what I meant to say was that he loved to see all the techie gadgets that came along during his lifetime and then buy them and try and figure out how…
Robbed of his 37th Birthday
This morning I woke up and was unexpectedly very teary. I’ve had a great week, I’ve been on holidays, started studying again, enjoyed some really happy moments with family and friend and feel like I’m in a good place. Yet here they were, the sadness and the anger, paying me an unwelcome and un-invited visit. Then I remembered, this coming…