• Austin and Chris walk in street for blog by DC widow writer Marjorie Brimley Hale
    Parenting

    What Would He Be Like?

    My kids like to ask questions that surprise me. They’re much more curious about illness and death and things like guardianship papers than most other kids their age, so I’m used to tough questions. We talk about what happens when people die, how adults plan for death and what it means to die young. You’d think I’d be prepared for every question, and yet, they still continue to surprise me. The other day, we were sitting around the dinner table talking about what would happen to them if Chris and I died. (They really want the specifics. I get it. It’s a possibility they know exists in the world.) Chris…

  • snow shoveling for blog by DC widow writer Marjorie Brimley Hale
    From the Archives

    From the Archives: The Mindfulness and Grief Therapy Session

    I spent a lot of the first half of 2018 looking for something to ease the strain in my chest, a pain that was obviously due to my mental state and yet also had a physical component. One night, I had my dad listen to my heart with his stethoscope, because it felt so out-of-whack. “You’re okay,” my dad said, though I knew he was only talking about my pulse and not the emotion that had caused me to wake him up so he could reassure me that I wasn’t having a heart attack. If I could have just taken a pill and made the pain dissolve, I would have…