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From Standing to Dancing
The thing about being a widow is that you become kind-of a crappy friend, at least for a little while. You cry at people’s weddings. You ruin perfectly good barbeques by talking just a little too much about your late husband. You’re never on time. You forget to call people back and you never remember anyone’s birthday besides your own. You never do the carpool and you certainly don’t organize weekly get-togethers. Sometimes when you get together with your friends, everyone spends all of their emotional energy on you. At times, it’s not a lot of fun to be a widow’s friend. Still, so many people have been good friends…
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I Am Someone New, Too
My sister had a baby last month. I was abroad when it happened, and I spent hundreds of dollars that day on my phone bill. I could hear the thrill of new parenthood in her voice, even just a few hours after she became a mom. I went to visit her a few weeks later. The second I saw her, I felt like I was going to start crying. There she was, holding her baby in a sling on her chest. The baby was sleeping. And my sister was beaming. In that moment, I could see it. My sister was the person she’d always been: thoughtful, and with a great…
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Angry
I am a bit of a hothead lately. Well, at least compared to my previous self. I’ve always been a somewhat emotional person, but anger wasn’t something I often felt. Sure, I’d get frustrated when Shawn did something like leave dirty dishes in the sink when he left for work. I can remember thinking how “angry” I was at him. But I wasn’t really angry. I was irritated. So all of this anger I’ve been feeling lately – well, that’s something that’s relatively new for me. I feel angry much more often than I ever did when Shawn was alive. To be fair, I’m not screaming at random people in…
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Watching “Widows”
A few months ago, my Hot Young Widows Club Facebook group lit up with the news that there was going to be a new movie coming out called “Widows.” Yes, we knew it was a blockbuster movie, and wasn’t likely to reflect much of our everyday experiences of losing a spouse. But still – a movie about widows! I was so excited that I put the date of the premier on my calendar. Getting out to see a movie as the parent of three little kids is complicated, but I knew I could work out childcare with my dad. The larger issue was that I wanted to see this movie…
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Single
I was chatting with some of my girlfriends the other day when we began to discuss this guy one of them knew who lives in another city. I can’t remember his name, so I’ll call him Bob. Anyway, Bob is apparently single and my friend wanted to find him a girlfriend. We all spent time having a heated, if somewhat ridiculous discussion about which teacher at our kids’ elementary school we’d like to see him date. Then, one of the women there said, “But really, I don’t really have any friends who are single anymore.” Others chimed in. A few people had some divorced friends, but most of the situations…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
