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    • Mission, Vision & Values
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    • Members of Foundation
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    • Our Sponsors & Partners
  • Get Involved
  • Resources
    • Grant
    • Events & Programs
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  • Blog
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On August 13, 2017, I lost the love of my life. Rick Palmer and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary one month before he died at age 63 of complications from treatments for small cell lung cancer. He was my partner and soulmate, the love I had been looking for and finally found at age 40.

Rick was a talented writer and web designer and, in 2002, we began our own web and print design business. We worked together building the business and enjoyed traveling, writing, and playing together. Our dream was to spend our golden years together doing more of the same, but in the ten months from diagnosis to death, that dream shattered.

After Rick’s death, I quickly realized that the enormity of his loss was too much for me to handle on my own, so I began grief therapy. I also began writing through my grief in a journal of feelings, thoughts, memories, and poetry. As I navigate my new life alone, I share my journey and my efforts towards creating my “new normal” on my personal blog: The Writing Widow. I’m also on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

I recently published two books about my grief journey: my poetry book, I Wanted to Grow Old With You: A Widow's First Year of Grief in Poetry, and compilation of my blog posts A Widow's Words: Grief, Reflection, Prose, and Poetry - The First Year." Both books are available in print and Kindle versions on Amazon.com.

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Recent Posts by this Author

Author Katherine Billings-Palmer

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grief journey

His Lasting Impact on My Life

by Katherine Billings-Palmer in Grief, Hope and Healing, Relationships and Dating
June 18, 2022June 18, 2022
The impact of Rick’s death has lessened as the years go by. That’s only natural. I've always been a firm believer that time really does heal all wounds, although not as quickly as we would like (and I definitely formed ...
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The Ordinary Moments

by Katherine Billings-Palmer in Grief, Widowhood Journey
May 14, 2022
I was watching a Brene Brown video and she talked about how everyone wants to have extraordinary experiences, but how the little things in life really matter more. She said that after stunning life events, like near-death experiences, the death ...
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Love Is All – Sadly Erasing Him From My Life

by Katherine Billings-Palmer in Grief, Widowhood Journey
April 9, 2022
I attended a writers’ conference two weeks ago. I’m still working (reworking) my plans for life without Rick after retirement. We had big plans for our golden years, well laid-out plans. We started our web design business in 2001 with ...
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memories

Write Down the Memories

by Katherine Billings-Palmer in Grief, Hope and Healing, Widowhood Journey
March 13, 2022March 13, 2022
My husband has been gone four and a half years. At this stage, the pain is no longer raw. His absence from my life isn’t something that nags at me hourly or daily as it once did. I’m used to ...
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hope and healing

A Piece of Him Inside Me

by Katherine Billings-Palmer in Coping Mechanisms, Grief, Hope and Healing, Widowhood Journey
February 8, 2022February 9, 2022
One of my new favorite shows, 1883, has the characters saying some memorable lines. But a discussion about grief in the last episode left me sobbing in a way I haven’t in a while. It was that pleasure/pain kind of ...
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Relinquishing the Dead

by Katherine Billings-Palmer in Coping Mechanisms, Grief, Hope and Healing, Mental Health, Widowhood Journey
January 15, 2022January 16, 2022
Author Joan Didion died in December. I’ve always enjoyed her writing, but I owe her a special debt of gratitude for her memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking. In it, she described the grief and pain following the death of ...
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grief knows no bounds

Grief Knows No Bounds

by Katherine Billings-Palmer in Coping Mechanisms, Grief, Hope and Healing, Relationships and Dating, Widowhood Journey
December 10, 2021
Grief knows no bounds. It can be triggered when you least expect it, although most triggers are obvious and predictable. After Rick's death, I knew going into a diner, Home Depot, or Costo would be painful. I knew vacationing without ...
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peace instead of pain

Remembrances of Things Past

by Katherine Billings-Palmer in Grief, Hope and Healing, Widowhood Journey
November 14, 2021November 14, 2021
The first year or two after losing Rick, every memory that popped into my mind was an emotional trigger that sometimes made me sob, and other times just brought on some quiet tears. The trick was learning to handle these ...
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Remembered Moments

by Katherine Billings-Palmer in Coping Mechanisms, Grief, Hope and Healing, Relationships and Dating, Widowhood Journey
October 12, 2021October 13, 2021
I went on a date last Saturday night...it was my first date with a new man I met in an online dating app. After two years of first dates, the only thing I know for sure is that you never ...
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Grief journey

Lost Dreams and Rewritten Futures

by Katherine Billings-Palmer in Hope and Healing, Widowhood Journey
September 11, 2021September 11, 2021
I was driving to an overnight visit with my two youngest grandsons. It was a beautiful summer evening and I had just had a perfect Friday - half a day of work, meeting a friend for lunch, followed by a ...
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