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Lullaby
A few months before my mom died, I broke up with my first boyfriend (who I’ll call Steve in this post.) Steve was good to me, and we were in love – at least in that way that 19-year-olds without a care in the world can be. But I had dated him since high school, and we both wanted to see who else was out there. I spent the summer that followed our break-up working at an amazing summer camp, Bruin Woods, and I met all sorts of new people. One of those new people I met was James. James worked as the camp’s fisherman, taking people out on early…
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Young Love
I was flying to the Cayman Islands to take a break from my life. It was just after Christmas, and the plane was filled with people vacationing. I located my seat, and then I saw the people sitting next to me – a really young couple who were holding hands. I took a deep breath and sat down. I’ve written before about how hard it can be at times to hang out with my happily married friends. But a newly in-love couple….well, that’s a whole other ball game. “Hi!” the girl said in the happiest voice I’d heard in a long time. She was darling, and so was the boy…
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Across the Doctor’s Office
Almost daily, someone asks me why I decided to write this blog. Here’s the response I usually give: In the beginning it was a way for me to connect with my loved ones and get my feelings out into the open. But then the blog (and my motivations behind it) changed a bit. DC Widow became a place of where I could connect with people that I didn’t know, specifically other young widows. My posts sparked conversations with my friends both online and in person. Soon, I found that I had a new reason for writing. I wanted my loss to have some sort of meaning. One of the posts…
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Sweet Potato Fries
The morning of Shawn’s funeral, I went to put on the one black skirt I had, and it literally fell off my body. I hadn’t realized until that point how much weight I had lost over the previous six weeks. My sister helped pin the skirt on me, and told me that really, it didn’t look that bad. “No one will notice,” she said. She was trying to be comforting, but it was probably true. No one was going to care what I was wearing. Including me. I hadn’t been able to eat much at all throughout Shawn’s hospital stay. At times, I was outright banned from eating in his…
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Salsa in my Cup
Two years ago, Shawn and I threw a party that was particularly crazy. We didn’t really mean for the party to get so wild. We just wanted to have a few friends over to celebrate the year and toast our successes, failures, and ability to have merely survived. As I remember, we were still reeling from the 2016 election, because that was the election that was supposed to have meant a big, important job for Shawn and ultimately didn’t pan out that way. Instead, we threw a party. Somehow, we all had way too much wine, in the way that you can when you aren’t really trying to have too…
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Life advice from the aesthetician
“Do you have kids?” the woman at the salon asked me. It was an innocuous question – one that I’ve asked other people a million times. But I knew where it might go. “I do,” I said, “three of them. All under 10.” “Wow,” she said, “that’s a lot of kids to handle.” “Well, yes, especially since I’m a single mom,” I said. “No kidding,” she said without pause, “I’m a single mom too. And it’s not easy.” A kindred spirit, of sorts, and here she was, giving me a facial. She looked like she was around my age, so I thought I’d just tell her the whole story. “My…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
