I never really felt comfortable with the word “widow”, I guess I’m not really supposed to, right? Like, who wants that word to describe who they are? But it does describe an aspect of who I am. Actually, now I ...
Death sucks. Plain and simple, it just sucks. Solo parenting is not an easy task. You are on duty 24 hours a day 7 days a week. There's no one to take your child for a night or weekend ...
Let’s begin a discussion about death and grief and send that elephant out the door. To enable this, society requires an open dialogue that provides education and empathy regarding the true reality of the grief journey. A shift in the ...
Here we are, in some of the darkest days of the year. I know the days have begun to get incrementally longer since the solstice, but that change seems imperceptible. Cold weather keeps us inside, out of whatever meager, cloud-filtered ...
I was all prepared to write about the importance of self-care for this post and had most of it written. It’s a topic near and dear to my heart and it’s a practice that moved me through the darkest parts ...
I read a news article yesterday, and the reporter stated that the widow was “still“ struggling with her grief one year later. And that word, still bothered me so very much. Upset me greatly. Of course she is “still“ struggling ...
We all know that feeling of a broken heart - wow, do we ever. After Dave died my heart literally felt physically broken. It was doing flip-flops in my chest and skipping beats like crazy. I’d been diagnosed with a ...
“Melissa, you’re brilliant!” I thought to myself. I had this great idea to spend our first holiday after Dave’s death in Disneyland. What a perfect distraction, right? I walked downstairs where the boys were playing video games - they were ...
I came across a post the other day while mindlessly scrolling Facebook, and it really made me stop and reflect. I remember finding the broken crayons in the box as a child, and if I’m being honest, choosing to put ...
It’s so hard to believe we are headed into our third Christmas without Seth. Sometimes it feels like the last Christmas we had with him was just yesterday. Other times I can’t even remember what we did on our last ...