It’s strange to always be walking around with Kenny. I named it Kenny, because if something is going to hang out for this long, it ought to be named. I also asked Google, my therapist, and ChatGPT about it, all ...
Forecasts of the coming storm started flashing across social media about three days before it actually hit us, which gave me time to head to Walmart for supplies. My youngest daughter and I go backpacking a lot, so we dug ...
The cashier insisted I bring home two pumpkins and a giant bag of candy after I awkwardly responded to her Halloween inquiry. ‘Uhm, Halloween just....isn't in the cards this year.' A thousand responses had flipped through my mind when she ...
I short circuit sometimes – when life gets too stressful – to a memory that repeats in haunting fashion. It is the lips of the doctor mouthing the words, “These things happen.” His lips are chapped and peeling. The corners ...
I still feel married. The dichotomy of this phrase is largely dismissed by widows. Conversely, we pass it around like bread at the dinner table, slathering it with butter and comforting our palates with the way it rolls off our ...
I have believed in God for as long as I can remember. My mother and the church indoctrinated me with visions of the cross, and on Sundays, I trailed behind her with hurried steps while she marched us towards service ...
Allowing myself to be happy, after the death of my husband, always felt a little like betrayal. It felt like I was shouting from the highest peaks that life without him was enjoyable, like I didn’t care that he had ...
My first grief therapy experience was a disaster – a Freudian approach connecting everything back to sex and my parents that left me feeling more broken and bewildered than when I began. The counseling was shoved in my face about ...
Over the years, in various blogs, I have shared that my late husband, Bret, wasn't exactly the easiest person to be around. Oh, sure he could absolutely be the life of the party. But at home, with no one new ...
Forever Incomplete I have always struggled with the incompletes in life. I was a self proclaimed over achiever who couldn’t settle for anything less than finishing each task. Earning less than an A made me sad. Goals, to ...