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Today is my birthday. It’s also the 3-year anniversary of my first blog post, “My 39th birthday…” Over the past few months, I’ve started to re-read many of these old blog posts, and sometimes I am downright shocked at the degree of openness I put out there, right in the beginning. So as I thought about my birthday this year, I decided to re-read this part of that post from three years ago: Here’s the thing – it’s not that I feel insecure in the same way I did at age 21, worried about how my hair looked or whether I was wearing the right jeans or drinking the right…
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Seven Kisses
Every night at bedtime, you make me give you six kisses. “Because I’m six!” you say, and you count them up each time. It doesn’t matter if I’m tired or if I’m stressed or if I really just need you to get in bed. I have to do those six kisses. Tonight, I’ll give you seven. Because today, my sweet Tommy, you are seven years old. How impossible it was to imagine, all those years ago, that you would be a boy that is thriving? That despite the fact that you lost your dad when you were just three, you’d still find a way to see so much joy in…
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Ask a Widow: How Long Does It Take To Feel Better?
Six months. That’s how long it takes. But really, it’s a year. Or maybe a bit longer. It depends, really. What were the circumstances? What happened afterwards? How long were you together? Are you caring for young kids? Do you have community support? Of course, after someone dies, there’s no real answer to the question, “how long does it take to feel better?” It’s so individual. Furthermore, very few people get to the point where they never grieve again over the person that they lost. But I think when people write me and ask, “how long does it take to feel better?” they aren’t actually asking, “when will every speck…
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Ask a Widow: Why is Sex So Complicated?
Do you want to know what my most popular post of all time is? Take a guess. As you’re thinking, remember that I’ve written over 450 blog posts, many of them about intense grief, therapy, single parenting and finding new love. So….did you think of one you believe was really popular? Yes? Well….I bet you didn’t think it was one about sex. BUT IT IS! Yep, my most popular post of all time is “Ask a Widow: Yes, It’s Okay To Want To Have Sex Again,” from November, 2019. If somehow you haven’t read it (like Google Analytics tells me thousands (!) of people have), here’s an excerpt: Just the…
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Ask a Widow: Therapy and Grief
Back in the early days of this blog, I spent a lot of time talking about therapy – therapy from my friends, therapy at my church, therapy with my widow friends, alternative therapies, and the therapy that I liked the best. Therapy was just a part of my life. But it wasn’t always effective. In fact, a lot of times when I went to traditional therapy – i.e. one-on-one therapy with a licensed professional – I left feeling….like it just didn’t do much for me. Maybe this is why I saw like 8 or 9 (or more?) therapists in the first year and a half after Shawn died. Or maybe…
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How We Met (A Valentine’s Day Story)
It’s an easy answer: he’s my best friend Becky’s brother. But that’s not really the answer to the question, “how did you meet?” We met a half-dozen times when the kids were tiny and I first knew Becky from preschool events. Chris would be visiting from Colombia or Maine or California wherever else he was living back then and I’m sure we chatted a bit, but neither of us can really remember that time period. So, if I’m literally answering this question, I’d probably have to say that we first met as I was cramming goldfish crackers into some child’s mouth, with spit-up from another child running down my arm.…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
