Bridget McNulty Posts

It’s 2020! We’re in the future. And I’m in my lovely, peaceful home, surrounded by plants and enjoying the silence of a house without children for the first time in a month. We had a really lovely Christmas and a beautiful New Year holiday that was nevertheless tinged with sadness because of the absence of my mom. Christmas without a mom! Who would have thought it was possible? Now that it’s a new year, I have a simple and powerful focus that I hope will permeate every aspect of 2020…

I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts over the last five months. Some funny, some light-hearted, some emotional and deep. My favourite of all time,…

My mom died five months ago yesterday. And I was hit by such an overwhelming wave of grief last night that I feel I am back at square one. What surprises me is not the timing of the wave – the 1st of every month has been hard, my dad isn’t feeling great, I was away this weekend so I had space and time for emotions to surface. What surprises me is the velocity and force of it.

Have you read The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz? Wonderful book… I’ve read it twice. Here are the four agreements:

1. Be impeccable with your word.
2. Don’t take anything personally.
3. Don’t make assumptions.
4. Always do your best.

The one I’m thinking about most is: ‘Be impeccable with your word.’ In certain situations, it’s the one I find trickiest.

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.

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.