This blog is sort of my personal journal. I share insights from my experience with grief and anxiety, along with self-awareness and personal growth. Welcome. I hope you find something here that reminds you you’re not alone.
Over the next several months, I watched in amazement as new leaves sprouted, shiny and green and healthy. The bush grew twice its size, and when I saw multiple flower buds I just about teared up as I realized the power of this example as a metaphor for life:
Pruning is essential in personal growth.
Read MoreEverything reminds me of her. I looked desperately for signs of her in the first weeks after her death, and now the reminders close in on me and suddenly I’m frozen in place at Target, with an urge to find a cute new top for Anni. No place for that urge to go, except in hot tears down my face.
Read MoreFrom my bed this morning hearing them sorting the gifts that were freshly placed last night, knowing they’re doing their own tally to make sure it’s all even and fair.
I also have been shopping for urns. Looking for the perfect ceramic container for Anni’s ashes. Pages and pages of options in the catalog from the morgue, and endless websites and none of them feels like Anni, and this is the worst type of shopping and also feels sacred.
Read MoreShe didn’t fight
She danced.
A guide
A mentor
A light
A quiet acceptance of the surgeries and doctor appointments and feeding tube and seizures
A smile on the hardest days
She entered the world “I’m here”
And exited the world “I’m not”
Sometimes I hesitate to share what I believe because my beliefs are subject to change with new information.
The more I evaluate my statement above, the more ludicrous it is that I feel any sense of shame for changing beliefs. And then I remember that I was taught from a young age to be proud that I was privy to divine knowledge, the secrets of the human condition, the one and only truth, and then it makes sense why I hesitate to share my shifting, flexible beliefs.
Read MoreWhat doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
But what if I don’t want to be stronger?
What if stronger sounds
impenetrable
independent
intact
What if I want the hard things in life
to make me soft
I was having a conversation recently with a woman who works for a national non-profit that assists families impacted by MPS (the type of disease Anni has), and she asked me this question:
“What makes the difference between someone who does amazing things in the world, and someone who can’t get out of bed?”
Read MoreI don’t really watch the news.
I wonder how many other people feel the heaviness of being attached to traumatic events of the world. Maybe we think we don’t have permission to look away. Maybe we think we’re being irresponsible if we don’t know what’s happening around the globe.
Read MoreI was 13 or 14 when I first saw porn.
My best friend and I were planning our big Saturday fun and she said she wanted to walk to a boy’s house who I didn’t know at all, but her boyfriend did and he was already there. We walked fairly far to his house and shortly after I met him, we all went into his bedroom and he put a tape in his VHS player.
Read MoreFor many years, I didn’t realize I was feeling sorry for myself. Externally I touted positivity, surrender, and looking at the bright side, but didn’t really understand that in a deep part of me, I still viewed myself as a victim of many of my circumstances.
Read MoreWhen we have unhealthy introspective patterns, change cannot happen. We get stuck in a cycle of negativity, shame, or flat-out ignoring ourselves. We get stuck because unless there is truth without shaming, there’s no real way for us to move forward or bump ourselves out of the ruts.
Read MoreTruth is, I wanted to lean out the window myself. I wanted to reach out and try to grab a leaf off the trees. I wanted to wave and shout to the people standing by the tracks. I wanted to turn my face toward the rain and catch drops in my mouth.
Read MoreWhen you were born, I woke up with every movement, every sound, every tiny squeak or out-of-sync breath. I’d sit up in my hospital bed, no matter what time, put my hand on your chest, adjust the swaddling blanket, lay back down.
Here I am now, sitting in a chair next to your hospital bed, waking up with every movement, every whimper or sigh or irregular breath amplified by the breathing machine between us.
Read MoreI knew that this was coming. At least I suspected it would. The whir of the oxygen machine, the light from the monitors illuminating her little body in a big bed. Bags of saline and medicine and food hang from the iv pole, like a medical jellyfish. Sea turtle decals on the doors and large pictures of the ocean on the bathroom wall.
Read MoreI was 27 when they told me she would die before me.
She would not bury me at 89 or 92 or 99
But I would bury her at 6 or 16 or 19
Would I put her body in the ground
Or let the ashes come home with me
Read MoreI was there when he died.
Well, almost.
I had been at my parents’ house a lot of the week, keeping watch with my mom, administering morphine to my dad, trying to keep him comfortable. He couldn’t communicate what he needed, couldn’t speak at all, or even acknowledge our presence at the end. I was there all Sunday morning with them, went home for five minutes, and in the short time that I was gone, he died.
I think maybe he was playing a final joke on me.
Read More
