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Tell Me About Him
About a month after Shawn died, I was on the phone with his former boss. She was asking about the kids, but then we started talking about Shawn. She shared stories with me, and I smiled, but mostly I cried. She worried that she was upsetting me, and I reassured her that I wanted to keep talking about Shawn. In fact, it’s all I wanted to do in those early days. I wanted to talk about Shawn all the time. I knew it was inappropriate to tell strangers on the metro and at the grocery store about my dead husband, but I did it anyway. It was a compulsion of…
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You’re Not Crazy. You’re Grieving.
As I type this, Tommy is in timeout for hitting his brother. He’s six, so I don’t think he’s going to turn into a bank robber just because he hit his brother. But in our house, actions have consequences. (Or at least I try to make it that way. I’m no perfect parent and I am not necessarily consistent with enforcing consequences. I’m just doing my best, like all single moms. But I digress.) My kids know that hitting is not okay, and an acceptable defense is not “but I was mad at him!” When they use this line of reasoning (which is common), I say, “it’s okay to feel…
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The 5 Friends a Widow Needs
I’ve been thinking a lot about my friends lately, especially because I don’t get to see them in person very often. Yes, sometimes I’ll pass someone on a walk a catch up for a moment, and yes, I do like to connect virtually. But as we all know, it’s not really the same as having a group of people gathered around your kitchen island, drinking beer and making chili and laughing about the week. I’ve also been remembering all of the support they have provided me over the past two and a half years. There are so many ways that my friends have kept me afloat that it’s hard to…
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How (Not) to Date a Widow
A few months ago, I was texting with a friend of mine, who is widowed. He has had a couple of relationships since his wife died, and the two of us sometimes talk about the crazy world of dating. It’s been a mystery to both of us, really, but it’s been nice for me to have a man to bounce things off of every once in a while. I think he feels the same about me. Anyway, he’d recently broken up with a woman he’d been dating. She had become distant with him over the course of a couple of weeks and he decided she must not like him that…
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It’s Not Something You Can Catch
I was at a party a while back and I met a group of single people. The host introduced me to them after I mentioned the difficulty of meeting people outside my circle of (mostly married) friends. Everyone was kind (though no one shook hands, because even though it was February, we were still being cautious – you didn’t know what you could catch!) and we started chatting about nothing. Eventually, people started sharing stories of how they’d met each other, and a couple of them talked about getting divorced and finding support in other divorced people. They could share stories with each other, and also commiserate about parenting. I…
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Hey Married Lady! Here’s What You Can Do To Support Your Single Friend
Let’s say you know a single woman. Maybe she’s divorced or maybe she’s a widow or maybe she’s coming off of a long-term partnership. But whatever the case, she’s now single. And she doesn’t want to be. You, however, are married. You aren’t always happy with everything your spouse does, but you have a stable marriage. You’ve dated in the past, but that was many years ago. So now you are watching your friend try to start dating. Maybe it’s been a really long time since you were in the dating world, and the idea of internet dating or sleeping with someone new seems really daunting. Trust me – it’s…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
