Theme: Grief Work and Healing Journey MY MOM'S MEMORY JOURNAL:  April 8th, one month and three days after my mom passed away, I found a journal my mom was using to write down her life's memories. I had been looking for a keepsake journal that I knew she had, but I never found it. She must've gotten rid of it because she didn't care for the prompts but rather wanted to write whatever came to her mind instead. The journal is almost half full of memories. On the inside of the journal, she'd written: "I am writing this journal to record any memory of my life when I remember some event ..read more

  Theme: Grief Work and Healing Journey The week after my mom passed away, I went to Erna Nixon Park, a nature park with a nice, boarded pathway. I walked it with my dad and stepmom as a distraction, to get out of the house, and to be in nature. Before I left, I sat down on a bench in a little tree nook and spoke out loud to my mom. I don't remember what I said. Maybe I apologized for my what I regretted and felt guilty about, as I had times before then and times after that. I might've just told her I loved her and missed her. Or I did a combination of all of that. Either way, what I ..read more

  Theme: Grief Work and Healing Journey Miracle Moments are those times after someone passes away, when in the midst of your grief, something happens to bring you peace or happiness or calm, that can make you feel connected to your loved one and give you hope, and even make guilt and regret vanish. FIRST MIRACLE MOMENT: I experienced my first miracle moment on March 16th (13 days after my mom had passed away). I was having a really hard time. I was in my mom's bedroom, lying on her bed, hugging myself and sobbing. Since my mom had passed away, I'd been stepping into her room occasional ..read more

  Theme: Grief Work and Healing Journey A few weeks after my mom passed away last year (2023), I found a small bucket of stones my mom had hand-painted to look like ladybugs. She had wanted to use them as swag at book events. Either as is or to turn them into magnets. I decided to leave them in random places for strangers to find, hoping they’d bring a smile to someone’s face. Or bring others a little luck. I think she would’ve liked the idea of her ladybug stones decorating the city for people to discover by chance, like treasure left behind by fairies. (I’m the fairy.)  There wer ..read more

  Theme: Grief Work and Healing Journey One of the first things I did after my mom passed away was go through her recipes. I was looking for her best recipes as well as things I could make myself. The recipes that I did not keep—which were just magazine recipes or recipes she jotted down from cookbooks—I gave to my siblings to go through and take what they wanted. I made copies of all of my mom's special recipes and gave them to my siblings. The first meal I made myself was a cottage pie recipe that calls for beer (I used non-alcoholic beer because that’s what I had). It was yummy. Then ..read more

  Theme: Grief Work and Healing Journey I started a full-time job in June, three months after my mom passed away. Before then, I was a stay-at-home writer, fully disabled under the law. However, living on my own required me to get a job in order to survive. I applied to more jobs than I can tell you and interviewed for a few that ended up not being right for my needs. The job I landed was actually advertised in a local Facebook group my sister is a member of. She sent me the post. I contacted the person who advertised the job, got an interview with the owner, vice president and general ..read more

  Theme: Grief Work and Healing Journey When my mom passed away, I finally realized why people become so attached to their loved one's clothes (and it’s because we live our lives in our clothes, memories are attached to them, and our scent clings to them). I had a hard time dealing with my mom’s clothes because I could picture her wearing them, and then there was the fact that they still smelled like her. Not her perfume, but her. Although her clothes and her room didn’t smell like her signature perfume—because she had been out of her signature perfume for over a year—I found myself wan ..read more

  Theme: Grief Work and Healing Journey My mom used to pen Haikus for fun, and she did it her way most of the time. She didn’t often pay attention to how many syllables each line had, which made them even more special and cute.   Here are a few of my mom's Haikus: Flooding waters lapping at the door catfish swimming by (She wrote that one after Hurricane Fay hit Florida. If you read Seismic Crimes, this is the catfish that inspired the catfish in a scene in the beginning of the book.) Read more ..read more

Theme: Grief Work and Healing Journey Grief Share are meetings you can attend with other grieving individuals that are typically held at churches. The lessons and the workbook are Christian-related, but even people who aren't Christian can benefit from being around and talking to other people who understand, in some way, what you're feeling and going through. And if you're not Christian, you can just ignore what doesn't work for you or your faith. There are other meetings you can attend other than Grief Share, but I'm talking about Grief Share because those are the meetings I'd found close ..read more

  Theme: Grief Work and Healing Journey Sharing my grief and my grief journey on Facebook helped me a lot, especially in the beginning. I didn't think I'd want to share something so personal, but I felt called to because I was lonely and also because I knew others could relate. I'm glad that I shared these things; the responses and love I received made me feel less alone...for a moment. Having a community really matters. TEXT READS: I was having a hard time a moment ago. Thoughts…grief…regrets…guilt… I went into my mom’s room, laid down on her bed, and cried…hard. I spoke out loud t ..read more