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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
This past week, I was up at our cottage in northern Michigan, and I joined the family at nearby Ocqueoc Falls. Rick used to make fun of the falls. When I first took him there, he kept laughing as he ...
Yesterday, Rick and I would have celebrated our 24th wedding anniversary. It was the third one since he’s been gone. I made it through the fog of the first one. By the second one, I had adapted to life alone, ...
I was at a four-day writers’ conference this past weekend. It was supposed to be on a lake in northern Michigan, but due to COVID, it was on Zoom. That’s a lot of screen time, but it was worth it. ...
I met a man. I like him a lot. He’s intelligent, funny, kind, interesting, and philosophical - all traits I desire in a partner. He says he likes me a lot, too - and he shows it in many ways. ...
Every morning I read a list of fifty things I have to be thankful for. I started doing this a few months ago; it was something my grief therapist suggested to help me get through the uncertainty and loneliness of ...