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I Am Doing Today
Last week was brutal. And there was no warning. In fact, I thought that with my birthday, things would be great. I LOVE my birthday. But it somehow set off something in me that sent me on a downward spiral. Maybe it was the realization that I was entering a new decade, and I was doing it without Shawn. Maybe it was being overwhelmed with the many demands of childcare and work that somehow really piled up at that moment. Maybe it was the fact that late at night, I started to feel really, really lonely. Regardless, I hit a bottom like I haven’t hit in a number of months.…
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The Fans in the Stands
“Nice shot Claire!” yelled the man sitting next to me. I barely knew him, but he was a parent of another girl on the basketball team. The shot had actually bounced off the rim of the basketball hoop, but this random father was still yelling encouragement to Claire. She looked in our direction. I gave her a thumbs-up. As I’ve written about before, sports are not my thing. I don’t know the first thing about whether my kid is off-sides or needs to go back and tag first base before running to second. I don’t watch sports and apart from a brief stint as a cheerleader, I don’t play them…
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After a Year
I got involved with the Hot Young Widows Club about a month after Shawn died. It is a place where widows of all backgrounds can share their most raw emotions and daily experiences (and contrary to the name, there is no litmus test to get in!) I found it comforting that other people struggled with similar issues that I faced and I often found myself scrolling through its newsfeed at night. But there was one thing that made me nervous about what I read there. Sometimes I would see a comment about how the second year after loss can be more difficult than the first year. Eventually, I discovered this…
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Just Because Your Husband Dies, You Don’t Necessarily Get the Job
I’ve mentioned it in other posts, but just in case you haven’t been following along closely: I applied for a new job at my school last month. I found out last Friday that I didn’t get it. To her credit, the principal told me herself. She didn’t beat around the bush, and she was thoughtful in the way that she told me. But those words, “we don’t have a position for you at this time,” almost crushed me in that moment. I understood that there were a dozen people applying for the same job, but I thought I had a good shot. And somewhere in the back of my mind…
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It’s Easy to Judge (100th Blog Post)
I was at a store the other day and the man helping me was very chatty. He wanted to know everything about me, and since I’m a talkative person myself, I started telling him about my life. I hadn’t yet mentioned that I was a single mom, and it was clear that he thought I was just another suburban wife with a handful of kids. “It’s great that since you’re a teacher, you get to spend so much time with your kids after school,” he said. “I’m lucky,” I said. “You know, there are just so many moms out there making bad choices,” he said. This came a bit out…
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Not My Domain
Shit just keeps breaking. For real – I cannot keep up with everything that’s broken in my house. The toilet paper dispenser in the downstairs bathroom has been ripped out of the drywall, the handle to the refrigerator is so loose I can barely close it and the back door has a doorknob that routinely falls off. My solution over the past year has been to ignore these problems. To be fair, this was what I did when Shawn was alive. The only difference was that he would actually fix things that were broken. Usually, I didn’t even have to ask. Shawn was handy. I didn’t grow up with a…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
