How can you befriend, love, respect, and, ultimately, grieve and miss someone you’ve never met? It’s easy if you’ve never met Cammy Chapel. Some of you remember Lynn’s Weigh , the blog where I wrote about my weight loss and body issues from 2005-2015. Sometime in the late 2000s, Cammy and I discovered each other’s … Continue reading Can You Grieve Someone You Never Met? Absolutely.
A few weeks ago, Carlene started “talking.” When she sits in my lap, she taps my face with her hands and says, “Mum mum mum,” and I am both proud and petrified. When I try to get her to say, “da da,” she always looks confused. “Who’s da da?” I imagine she asks. “He’s the guy we’re both growing up without,” I tell her.
How many times in a day, a week, a month do you say to yourself, "I should have/why didn't I..." and proceed to berate yourself for not doing the thing you think you should have done? My answer is: too many. Living with a loss, in all its forms – death, divorce, employment, friendship, money, … Continue reading Grief Talk: Self-Kindness
between. The thing is, though, that even when we think it’s destroying us, it just might be strengthening us, teaching us more about ourselves than we ever wanted to know.
I'm dedicating Tuesdays to all things grief, including book reviews, links to recommended readings and podcasts, guest posts, and other grief-related topics.
When I feel the griefs, I’ve learned to acknowledge, (“I see you, Grief.”) and allow it (“Here’s some tea, now go sit over there.”) and get about my business, which I did. It’s never easy, but I did it.
Out of nowhere I remembered how much I love magic tricks and fireworks and I felt really happy. Peaceful happy. Fun happy. In awe happy. Don't question why happy.
I read the letters, but not the ramblings because, you know, I'd have plenty of time before our next Zoom call to do that. Then he up and died, just like that, on Monday night.
I can melt a bowl of ice cream with all the tears I cry when I rewatch This Is Us. Sad tears, happy tears, a-thousand-other-emotions tears. This Is Us opens cages I locked years ago; cages I didn’t think had keys anymore. Didn’t I move on from ______? Apparently not. Part of why I get … Continue reading How “This is Us” got motherhood and grief right
