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Last Post: There’s No Handbook For How to Do This
5 years ago today, I started this blog. It was my birthday, and I was turning 39. Shawn had been gone for about six weeks at that point and honestly, I was still mostly in shock. I hadn’t yet hit rock bottom (though I believed I already had) and I was hoping that the blog might be a way for me to start to heal. Or at least I hoped it could be a place for me to tell my friends and family why I wasn’t returning their phone calls. My friend Caitlin helped me set up the blog in the weeks leading up to my birthday. I did all…
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Adios, 2022… (Part 1 of 2)
Adios, 2022. Adios to planning and making sure everything is perfect before I do something daring. Life is too short to avoid risk. Adios worrying about what kind of a widow I should be. I am remarried, I am a mother, I am happy. I am also a widow. Adios old cars and old car registrations, and adios to the DMV. Okay, not really, because I know I’ll be back at the DMV many more times, but adios to dealing with death-related things at the DMV. Adios fear that Chris will die. He will, someday. But not yet. Not yet. Adios, trying to please everyone. It never worked in the…
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From the Archives: You Are Making Meaning Already
About a year after Shawn died, I had a short but passionate relationship with a man I’ll call Derek. It ended badly. I didn’t want to admit to most of my friends that the breakup hit me really hard. I told them that I wasn’t sure why I was down, but that I seemed to be experiencing new grief. Really, the original misery over losing Shawn had never gone away. But my relationship with Derek had tamped that grief down, had made it smooth around the edges, encapsulated in a vessel that I could hold and manage. Somehow, our breakup had broken that vessel and the grief spilled out everywhere.…
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From the Archives: My Mom’s Diary (Part 2 of 2)
The diary took me a long time to finish, but I read it all in one sitting. When I was done, I realized I had used almost all of the tabs. Each page was full of my notes, with arrows pointing to the margins where I’d written questions or tried to connect her thoughts. I came downstairs to my friends. “How did it go?” Michelle asked. She was on the couch, also writing, and Becky was across the room, fiddling with her camera. They both turned to face me. “It was…” I couldn’t find the right words. They waited for me to finish. “It was a lot.” “I’m sure it…
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From the Archives: My Mom’s Diary (Part 1 of 2)
To be honest, I wasn’t sure if I was ready to face my mom’s diary. What was it going to tell me about who she had been? How might it change the memories I had of her? Was it even right to read someone else’s diary, even if she had left it for us to find? I knew I couldn’t do it at home. For some reason, I wanted to be away both from my kids and from my dad. It wasn’t just about the constant interruptions that happened at home, but rather more that I needed a clear head. Becky and Michelle offered to go away with me for…
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Thanks on Thanksgiving
I’m going to let you in on a secret. I’ve decided that it’s time to end the blog. Don’t worry – I’m not stopping right now! At this point, I don’t know exactly how I’m going to stop writing this blog. But for the past few months, I’ve been wrestling with whether it makes sense anymore for me to write about widowhood. The early, intense months of widowhood are now in the past for me, and even the big changes that occurred over the past 4 1/2 years – living with my dad, raising kids as a single mom, dating, falling in love, the pandemic, getting married and having Chris…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
