Last week a friend rang my doorbell for a walk. I opened the door, greeted her and stepped out into the cold January morning, my eyes squinting into the bright sunshine and my breath suspended in the air before me. She asked how I was. I answered with a sigh, "Oh, OK. How are you?" "I'm OK," she said slowly, before adding, "Worried about you." We started walking. I told her it had been a hard week, for whatever reason. She drew on a method we both value from author and researcher Brené Brown and said to me, "The story that I'm telling myself is that I did something to upset you." "Oh, lord, no ..read more

Early in the summer I dreamt my son was dying. My perfect, beautiful boy. I was helpless, aware even in my subconscious that this was too much. My own desperation jolted me awake. I opened my eyes and heard myself saying, “I cannot do this.” I blinked and looked around the dark room. My heart was pounding, my breath shallow and fast. “It’s ok,” I told myself. “It was a dream. He’s ok. He’s not sick. It was a dream.”  I looked at Chris, breathing steadily next to me, and I remembered. I woke up from a dream about my son dying to the reality that my husband is sick, that he has a terminal i ..read more

Dear Chris, Today you are 40 years old. Two years ago I didn’t know if we’d make it to this day. If we did, I thought with certainty, life would look so different for us, full of wheelchairs and breathing machines and all sorts of medical devices keeping you alive. But here you are today, at your favorite place in the world, driving the boat and diving off the dock, throwing footballs to the kids in the water and playing wiffle ball in the yard. You are drinking vodka sodas and eating lobster drenched in butter and having a frappe a day. You are not dying, and lately I’ve been thinking more an ..read more

In this week’s episode of Sorry, I’m Sad I talked with Kate Fagan about her book, All the Colors Came Out, which is about the relationship between a father and a daughter. Kate’s book resonated with me on so many levels, but since it’s Father’s Day, it really made me think about my dad. My dad is a retired farmer, and I’m the youngest of three girls. He was and is everything a “girl dad” should be. I don’t get to see my dad today. My parents live in the United States and I live in Canada, so I haven’t seen them in more than a year. I want to give him a hug today and play basketball in the driv ..read more

Yesterday morning I sat in the sliver of sun that streams into one corner of my living room. I wanted to read, drink my coffee, feel the warmth on my face. I wanted to take deep breaths and center myself for the day ahead. I wanted time and space to still my busy mind, so I sat down, pulled a blanket over my legs, took a sip of my coffee, opened my book, exhaled and started to read. One paragraph later I stopped. It felt useless. My spinning mind knew the stillness wouldn't last, and it refused to focus. It waited for the inevitable interruption, and within minutes it came. I put my coffee on ..read more

One night recently, she cried out for me. She doesn’t do that much anymore, but earlier that night, when I’d tucked her in and softly sung, “You are my sunshine,” in her ear, she’d cried. “What’s wrong lovey?” I’d asked. “I just started thinking about a sad thing,” she’d said. “Oh?” I ‘d asked. “What are you thinking about?” And with tears thick in her voice she’d said, “I’m thinking about when you will die.” So hours later, when she called my name, I went to her and brushed the hair from her face and kissed her sweet, sweaty cheek and asked again what was wrong. She didn’t know. She just kne ..read more

Hi friends, All of the messages you've sent me about your own grief and your own sad stories tell me we need more spaces to talk about these hard things. So, I decided to launch a podcast on this very subject. You can find Sorry, I'm Sad on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and at www.sorryimsad.com. I hope you will join me. xo - Kelsie ..read more

Last week a friend rang my doorbell for a walk. I opened the door, greeted her and stepped out into the cold January morning, my eyes squinting into the bright sunshine and my breath suspended in the air before me. She asked how I was. I answered with a sigh, "Oh, OK. How are you?" "I'm OK," she said slowly, before adding, "Worried about you." We started walking. I told her it had been a hard week, for whatever reason. She drew on a method we both value from author and researcher Brené Brown and said to me, "The story that I'm telling myself is that I did something to upset you." "Oh, lord, no ..read more

The past few days, friends on social media started posting the first photo they took in 2020 and the last. Some were heartwarming -- the friend whose first photo was of her pregnant belly, the last of her adorable baby boy. Others were silly, a play on the stresses of a hard year, and some heartbreaking -- photos of people who started the year with someone they love and are ending it without them. I opened my phone, curious what my first photo last year was. I scrolled back through the months and found it -- Chris kneeling on the ice, Cohen and Willa on either side of him, all three of them s ..read more

Next week a surgeon will cut into my husband's abdomen. He'll put a tube down Chris' nose and blow up his stomach like a balloon, and then he will slice through it and stick a tube from the outside in, blow up another little balloon in that tube so it doesn't come out of Chris' stomach, stitch around the opening in his skin, and, just like that, Chris will have a feeding tube. Next week we gain some things -- a better quality of life for Chris, no more worry about him losing weight and less worry about him choking or aspirating and getting pneumonia. But as the four of us sat around the Thanks ..read more