Two weeks ago my brother-in-law passed away unexpectedly. His is not the first death of someone close since Tom died, but it maybe hits a little closer to home, since Richard was relatively young and his death was unexpected. The weekend of the funeral I kept thinking surely there had to be something I could say or do to make […]
I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone who didn’t know about the concept of “positive self talk”. It’s that thing where you tell yourself positive things about yourself – “I am capable”, “I can do hard things”, etc. I can’t say that I have ever really put this in practice, but I think it is because I don’t […]
We are at six and a half months and I find myself in another wave of grief. It’s a dichotomy, grieving, at least for me. On the one hand, I want to cope as well as I can with my altered circumstances. On the other hand, if I’m coping too well, then I start to worry – “why aren’t I […]
When I didn’t know how to cope with my new reality, I went to the internet looking for some kind of scripture study guide on the topic of grief and loss. But aside from things like “10 scriptures on grief” there wasn’t much. I wanted something more comprehensive. Eventually I just started looking up topics in the topical guide of […]
One of the books recommended to me after Tom died was The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. There were many things that resonated with me as she shared her experiences during the year after her husband died. One thing she talked about (and gives the book its name) is the idea that if she just did things a certain […]
I’ve learned something valuable this past month – distraction can get in the way of grieving, and not in a good way. A few weeks ago I was at a baptism for the daughter of a friend and right at the end, I found myself crying for no apparent reason. Despite the fact that I write a public blog I’m […]
Is there anything to write about besides the obvious? Everyone wants to know how we are – is it getting better? How are the kids? What can we do to help? I feel like I have no good answers. We’re doing O.K. Life is moving forward, mostly in the way that it did before – just with less laughter (because, […]