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I Know You’re Ready When You Tell Me You’re Ready
It’s been almost three years since I sat down with my dear friend Kristin, looked her in the eyes and said something I was terrified to say: “I think I’m ready to start dating again.” It felt like a confession. It was the end of the summer of 2018, and I’d had a very brief encounter with a man (you can read about that here) which left me feeling changed. For the first time since Shawn died, I desired men. I wanted to be around them, and I knew I didn’t want to remain celibate anymore. Shawn had only been gone for about 7 months at that point. I hadn’t…
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A Happy Ending
One of my favorite authors (who I profiled for the Post a few years ago) is Nora McInerny, a young widow who is a writer and a podcaster. She wrote a book that came out a few years ago called “No Happy Endings” which, as you can imagine, was about how there is always going to be grief that remains after losing someone, even if we find a new love. (It’s about a lot of other things, too, so check out this link if you’d like to read what I wrote.) In any case, lately I’ve been thinking about the idea that grief never really goes away. I think it’s…
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Widowhood and Breakups
I’ve been thinking a lot about breakups lately, which I guess is super strange since I’m also wedding planning. Let me be clear – I’m not thinking about my own relationship breaking up! But I think being in love (and knowing that I have a future with someone new) has made me reflect on all the times when it didn’t work out. And there were a lot of times when it didn’t work out. I wrote very little about it at the time. I told some of my friends that I was dating, but I was shy about it with most people. I felt judged by everyone, even though the…
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Widowhood, Dating and a Global Pandemic
Okay, let’s start with the obvious: if you’re a widow and you’re trying to date right now, it is….well, it’s probably not as easy as it was for you the last time you tried to date. I mean, first – and most obviously to anyone who is single, widow or not – there’s the pandemic. It’s pretty tough to just randomly meet someone in a bar or at a coffeeshop anymore. That’s something I used to love to do, once upon a time. I think it helped with the mental fatigue of dating, honestly. Even if I didn’t actually talk to someone I found attractive, seeing other potentially single people…
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Two Widows at the Orthodontist
Austin is a pretty chill kid, unfazed by a lot of the mini-dramas of childhood. He doesn’t get anxious about schoolwork or whether he’ll get picked to play first base, and he never seems to worry much about the things that sometimes bother other kids. Thank goodness, because as long as Covid lasts, he has to go into the orthodontist’s office without me. He does it with little fanfare, and I sit outside the office on the sidewalk each time. Last week, he had an appointment to get braces on his top teeth, which apparently takes forever. I was working on my phone, answering emails from students and trying to…
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Risk
The first time I hurt my ankle I was a block from my house. Chris and I had been running frequently in the mornings, and Claire had decided that she wanted to join us. So, that late spring morning, we’d all set out on a run. Somehow, the pain struck just spitting distance from home. It hurt, but I could still walk. I told them to keep running without me, and I limped home. I put some ice on my ankle and by the next day I could walk without a problem. A week later, I was back to my normal runs. A month went by. Chris was back at…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
