Assumptions NOT to make about a widow (even if you are one yourself).   1) Don’t assume you know exactly how she feels. 2) Don’t assume that because you lost a parent or another loved one, that you understand losing her husband. All losses matter equally and result in grief and sorrow, but each is very different. Even if you are a widow too, you don’t know what it was like for her to be married to her husband. Each loss, each love, each couple is unique. 3) Don’t assume because you lost your husband after many years of marriage and raising your children together that you understan ..read more

Embracing Grief in the Summer: Finding Solace in the Sunshine Summer is often associated with warmth, joy, and carefree moments. It’s a season of long, sunlit days, vacations, and gatherings with family and friends. However, for those experiencing grief, summer can feel particularly challenging. The stark contrast between the external vibrancy and internal sorrow can make the grieving process feel even more isolating. But amidst the brightness, there are ways to navigate this season of grief with compassion and understanding for oneself. Grief is a deeply personal journey, and in the summer, i ..read more

Widows face challenging social life changes in the wake of the loss of her husband. Making the adjustment to life after a spouse dies is filled with many endings and beginnings of relationships. This is a reality that is not talked about enough. Healing comes when widows encounter sensitive social support that continues as long as necessary. It might be several years down the road in widowhood for many widows before they settle into the transition enough to stand securely on their own. Earlier this month God gave me a very special gift. A man I’ve known for more than 30 years came to visit fro ..read more

The month of May brings a mixture of complex emotions.  On May 1, 2015, my husband died at 10:30pm at a local hospital after resting (sedated) there for only 3 days.  The memories of that day and time are still fresh as though it happened yesterday.  The events and moments leading up to that eventful time are not even important, but I still remember everything I did that day and what happened.  Those events used to be played over and over again in my mind, questioning what I could have done differently or was there time to have intervened?  Years ago, I ceased to ask t ..read more

As I watch my children play, I’m reminded of how much they’ve grown and changed over the past few years. Each day, they surprise me with their resilience, their joy, and their ability to find magic in the smallest of things. It’s a bittersweet reminder of the journey we’ve been on since losing their father, a journey that has been fraught with immense pain and unexpected moments of healing. In the early days, everything felt like a monumental effort. Getting out of bed, making breakfast, even just smiling felt like climbing a mountain. The weight of our loss was compounded by the trauma surrou ..read more

We’ve all heard the saying “You won’t understand (* something *) until it happens to you.” Intellectually, we get what that means, but we won’t truly know, to the depths of our souls, the accuracy of that phrase until something does happen to us. Throughout my life, I witnessed acquaintances and elderly relatives becoming widowed. My heart ached for them, but I couldn’t possibly have known what it felt like for them. The closest I ever came to understanding was when my maternal grandmother passed, leaving my grandfather widowed. My grandfather was always one of my favorite people on Earth. He ..read more

  Living without my husband feels so much like a cruel sentence. It feels like I have lost so much at a such a young age, and continuing here the remaining years of my life, separated from him at times feels so much like torture. It feels like the judge has proclaimed “I hereby sentence you to living out the rest of your life without your best friend, your safe place, and your true love. Henceforth you will walk the earth with open wounds and gaping holes in your spirit and soul and will feel brokenness like you’ve never known. Your sense of control will be obliterated, for never before ..read more

When we are in the throes of deep grief, it’s tough to imagine how anything else, ever, could be worse than what we are feeling. Pain and grief feel incredibly isolating. They are deceptive as well – even when others reach out to us, it’s oftentimes hard for us to feel the support that they may be offering. Nothing feels worse than the way we feel in those times. Because we are humans and we strive to relate to other humans, sometimes, people will try to offer comfort by bringing up their own pain. I have seen this cause many rifts in friendships. Example: “I know what you are going through be ..read more

  I was recently staring at a painting created by my three year old. I looked intently at the colors behind the blackish brown and wondered what it was supposed to have looked like. What was the original beauty behind the dark cloud ? And why did my little three year old artist decide to cover the beautiful with all that black? Messy, sloppy darkness covered most of the canvas in ways that I would never have myself chosen to paint. I would have left the beautiful happy looking scene of golds, greens, reds and oranges alone, but my little guy just seemed to have his own definition of what ..read more

There’s a gremlin called grief and it pops up in the most inconvenient times. Couple holding hands in the store? No emotion. Walking past the camping isle in Walmart? Emotional breakdown. The gremlin called Grief doesn’t care if it’s been 6 days or 6 years. You will relive all the worst moments you endured if someone you know is sick or dying. Birthdays, holidays, weddings, school functions, and every happy moment are always a little sad because they should be here. The gremlin called grief isn’t loud…but sometimes it’s the only noise you hear. Some days the gremlin sleeps and you have a norma ..read more