I can’t believe Mike is really gone forever. I just can’t wrap my head around that fact. He feels so alive to me in my heart; in my mind’s eye I see him going about his days as he did, his enthusiastic energy always pulsing within my purview. Mike was just one of those people who was…just so full of life. I’ve run into two friends this…
young widow
The Sisterhood of the Travelling Widows
There is something so very unique and special about the friendships that form between widowed people. Last weekend I got to hang out with some of my favourite people – all widows who I’ve met since Dan’s death. We’ve bonded over our mutual understanding of what it’s like to live this nightmare – through many nights of teary phone…
What I’ve Learned
Losing my husband unexpectedly and learning to live with that loss has taught me so much. I’ve been thinking about this off and on for quite awhile…and while the sum total is far too long for one blog post and the learning process is ongoing probably for the rest of my life, I think there are a few pretty solid bullet points to share. What…
My Week of Retreat
The quest for peace, acceptance and happiness after losing my husband to depression has taken me to some unexpected places. It has lead me travelling (around Australia to meet with other widows and to the USA to connect with Soaring Spirits at Camp Widow), encouraged me to try new things, forced me to open myself up to ideas about life and…
New Life, Old Life
If I’m being 100% honest, which I always am in my writing about loss, there are actually two of me. Version One of me was born on September 26, 1971, and she died on July 13, 2011. Version Two of me was born on the same day, within seconds even, of version one’s tragic death. Version One never saw it coming. A massive heart-attack took her husband…
The Wave
You know the one. That wave of emotion that overcomes us, drowns us, in that rush of remembering all at once, what our reality is now… I still remember (how could I ever forget?) in the first days and weeks after Mike died, waking up before the sun and lying there trying to grasp that he wasn’t here anymore…dragging myself out of bed,…
My Other Soul Mate
I’ve spent the past week at a holistic healing and yoga retreat in Bali, Indonesia and planned to tell you all about it today. It was an incredible week. I’m still processing everything that happened and trying to work out how to put it in to words. On top of that, my 6-hour flight home landed in Brisbane at 4:45am this morning so I…
Anchor
I went to the doctor today. I know. That doesn’t sound like a big deal, but believe me, in my world, it is. When my husband died suddenly just under 4 years ago, we were living paycheck to paycheck. We shared his beat up old car to get to our jobs, and we had nothing in savings. We lived in a crappy and small apartment in New Jersey, and we were…
Unintended Solitude
I used to enjoy solitude. My mother tells me that when I was a child, I used to prefer playing in my room by myself with my toys and books to playdates with friends. She said I’d spend hours up there alone, and even thought it was a bit odd for it. Not to say I never played with other kids – of course I did. But a lot of the time, I was…
Can I Really Do This
I’m writing this from an airplane, somewhere over the Indian Ocean, as I’m on my way to Bali to spend a week at a beautiful yoga and healing retreat. It’s a funny story actually… this whole trip only got planned on Tuesday. Yes, as in four days ago. It came about through a range of unusual circumstances and has really had me thinking about…
Everywhere
There was a time, early on in my loss, where I felt like I was constantly on the search for my husband. Every second of every day was spent , in my mind and heart, trying to locate him somehow. People kept telling me over and over and over that he is always with me, that he is in my heart, and all those other cliche’, blah-blah-blah things that…
My Husband, My Blessing
This has been an emotional week for me. Tuesday would have been our second wedding anniversary and as I looked back at the stunning photographs of our beautiful day, my heart was filled with a complicated mixture of happiness and sorrow. Over the past few months, I’ve been doing such a good job of living in the ‘now’ that I haven’t made…