What kind of widow are you? & What kind would you like to be? Widow is a word that feels tattooed to my flesh against my will. Try as I might to scrub it away, conceal it, or pretend I ...
Rediscovering Hope as a Widow Miriam Webster defines hope as “desire accompanied by expectation of or belief in fulfillment.” What do you desire as a widow? For me, it’s mostly the same thing I wanted as a wife: to ...
Not too long into my own widowhood journey, I noticed something that happens once the newness of our loss has worn off for everyone but us: many of my friends, most of my lovely, wonderful support group had all but ...
Today is National Widows Day. Ten years ago I had never heard of this day. Then my late husband died. And for the last 9 years this has been a day that I know all too well. Widowhood is a ...
It isn’t black veils over gray hair. It isn’t wrinkly hands clasped in front of them standing at the cemetery. It isn’t (always) a 90 year old staring out the window at gloomy clouds day after day. There is no ...
How do I cope with the raw pain of my grief? 18 things that have helped me survive. The other half of my heart and soul “graduated to heaven” about 18 months ago. It is so hard to believe 1 ...
Sometimes on this exhausting journey through grief I find I don’t “widow well.” In those messy moments I can’t help but think about the many things about the word “Widow” that I wish didn’t come with the territory. Being a ...
Within the first few months after my husband died, I very quickly learned that grief can be a lot of things: anguish, pain, anger, love, numbness. I mean, there are five stages after all. One word I haven’t heard when ...
“Year two is harder than the first.” In the early days after losing my husband, Joe, I’d read how the second year of widowhood and grief is often harder than the first. 'Uhh, yea right,' I’d say to myself, usually ...
I have written in-depth about social media. It has benefits and flaws just like everything else, but I have to admit that it was incredibly helpful in the early days of my grief. Initially, I didn't think that I would ...