Writer. Speaker. Content Strategist.
I have always wanted to be a gardener… One of those ladies in wide-brimmed straw hats (don’t have one) with a basket full of tools (don’t have one) and an encyclopedic knowledge of plants (don’t have one). But what I do have, all of a sudden, is a passion for gardening as therapy. Here’s how I think it works:
I am truly blessed with my friends. I struggled with friendship drama in high school and the years following, but I have lucked out in the friendship department these days… My friends see me, understand me, reach out and check in on me even when the news is almost always sad and boring at the moment. I recognise how rare and wonderful that is.
Of all the things I didn’t anticipate about grief, I think the one that surprises me the most is how boring it is. I am so tired of being sad. I am so sad and tired. I have no new words to describe how much I miss my mom, but I still miss her achingly.
Things have been pretty hard and sad around here, as you can tell from all the depressing blog posts. But then Mark got hit by a car on Friday, and all of a sudden I was longing for the hard, sad days of before.
He’s okay – or he will be, after 6 weeks of bed rest, when his broken back heals itself and his sprained wrist comes right. He’s lucky: it could have been much worse. But being knocked off your motorbike and skidding across the road till your lumbar spine hits the pavement is pretty bad, let’s be honest. And it has made one thing very clear to me.
I don’t know who I’m writing this for – probably just myself, or some future version of me who can look back and see how far I’ve come. Maybe someone who needs it will find their way here one day when they’re in the thick of grief. But here are some things that have surprised me about the grieving process…
Four weeks since my mom died, and I am deep in the fog of grief. I just heard the term this weekend, and it so perfectly captures what it feels like right now. “What happens is that our grief gets so heavy that it surrounds us, clouds our minds, and interferes with our ability to think clearly. We’re on overload,” writes Kenneth C. Haugk.
“The special days are the hardest,” they said. “The birthdays, the holidays, Christmas… That’s when you’ll miss your mom the most.” Except in the 3 weeks since my mom died, it’s been nothing but special days… This is birthday season.
A lot of lovely people have been asking how I’m feeling lately, and it’s a difficult question to answer. Not only because I feel different every day, but because the feelings don’t fit into words as easily as they used to. I usually settle for: okay.
Today is not a day for gratitude. But if there’s anything to be grateful for, it’s that Helen loved out loud. When she loved you,…
We are in such an intensely sweet stage with the kids at the moment, interspersed by periods of intense whining. Such is life, I suppose! But I want to remember these moments because this is the part of childhood I loved the most, and the part of parenting I was most excited about…
