Death of a Spouse, Open to Hope

After Eight Years, It’s Getting Better at the Holidays

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Thanksgiving is here. I am grateful for many, many things. Every day I count my blessings…really. My life is pretty, dang good most days. Sure I have struggles and challenges, everyone does. Widowed and non-widowed alike will have moments of acute gratitude and acute pain. It is what it is. People have joy and sorrow in their lives every, single day….holiday or not. I’m getting better at holidays. Over eight years of practice now and I don’t feel completely taken down by them. This is my ninth Thanksgiving widowed. It is my boys ninth Thanksgiving without their dad. When I […]

Death of a Spouse, Your Grief

Missing my Husband, Missing my Champion

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

When Eat, Pray, Love released years back, I read it.  I enjoyed it and I even read Liz Gilbert’s sequel to it and enjoyed it too.  When the movie came out, I wanted to see it.  I never caught it in the theater, but remember watching it at home.  I remember not really liking it too much. Oh well. Last night, in a pre-holiday stress bout with insomnia, I caught some of the movie on TV.  As I enter my eighth holiday season alone, the stress fills me up and manifests in a severe lack of restful sleep.  I’m familiar […]

Death of a Spouse

Hiccups: During Grief, We Really Feel Them

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Since the end of last month, my world has been in a state of flux. Those last few weeks of July, I was feeling impatient, edgy, and frustrated. I didn’t have a classroom, but had an idea about a job at the school that I’ve worked at for years. I was feeling the squeeze of the door shutting on the upcoming school year with the jobs filling, but I was still without a place to call home. As is the story of my life in more recent years, in the final hours…voila…a great job appeared. I interviewed and was offered […]

Open to Hope

An Insulated Heart: Feeling For Oklahoma Victims

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Right after I was widowed, my heart was raw. It was wide open, exposed, and vulnerable to all and any heartache that I saw and heard. It didn’t matter if that tragedy was near or far. If I heard it, saw it, read it, my heart ached for those involved. My empathetic senses were turned up to full power. If I heard of people losing loved ones, I was ripped back to my early moments of loss and sadness. It truly was like going back to square one and experiencing my own loss of Dave as if it were the […]

Your Grief

Oklahoma Tornadoes: Even in Tragedy, the Power of Good over Evil

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

I was a youth minister when the Columbine school shooting occurred many years ago. It was my first experience with public tragedy that affected youth directly during my professional ministry. As the tragedy occurred, I knew I had a group of junior high teens coming to group that afternoon.  I didn’t know how many of the kids would show up, but I knew some would.  I knew the kids would need a safe place to talk about what happened.  I knew I would have to be sensitive and listen to what they needed, not inflict adult needs on them. I […]

Death of a Spouse

From ‘the Darkest Place,’ Discovery

Saturday, April 13, 2013

I think one of the strangest places that my journey of widowhood has taken me is this place of discovery.  Discovery brought forth by the need to survive.  This new place is definitely earned.  I struggled to survive for so many years.  I searched my being for a way to get through each minute, each breath when Dave died. At 39 years old, I was a widow.  I was a mom with two little boys looking to me for guidance through this unknown journey of grief.  I didn’t have a clue how to survive.  It was all trial and error. […]

Death of a Spouse

Still Unsettled, Years After Husband’s Death

Sunday, July 29, 2012

Years ago, I thought I’d be settled by now. I thought I’d have found my way. I thought, well, I thought. I imagined. I had no idea how life would be, so I thought it’d be different by now. The slate was blank again and plans were erased. It was up to me to figure out which direction to head, but here I sit many years later feeling unsettled…still. This is not to say I haven’t moved toward something. I have. I have come along way from the night when I watched him die. I have moved through the moments […]

Children & Teens, Death of a Spouse, Special Topics

Thanks to the Men who Help Kids After Father Loss

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

When my husband died, I knew it would be important to my boys to have men around and in their lives. Since they would no longer have their trail guide, it was up to me to make sure men of good character, who were loving, compassionate and wise were a part of their lives. I can’t imagine a boy growing up without his dad. I live it every day though. My dad grew up without his dad, so I knew it was possible for them, but also knew they would need some extra loving care. Cue – my brothers – […]