Day after day I hear how many widows and widowers are hurting. Of course, your hearts hurt! You hurt because you loved, but remember LOVE is a good thing! There were many days that I thought, “I wish this didn’t hurt!” But then realized that I wouldn’t hurt at all if I didn’t care. If […]
I have heard people say that if everyone were to put their challenges in a pile, then you could choose a few, you would look at all of the choices, then pick out the ones you put in the pile, to begin with. Are you crazy? Haha, I would choose the person who is on […]
I heard that song the other day—“I get knocked down, but I get up again”—and it made me smile. Life’s like that, right? Emotional, physical, or financial—sometimes we fall, but the real magic is in getting back up. Think about when we were kids learning to walk. We fell so many times, but did we […]
Most households have a ton of paperwork- such as mail, kids’ homework, memories, important documents, etc. I felt the amount of paperwork after my husband passed away tripled in size! What in the world? Are you kidding me?! I already couldn’t concentrate- what am I supposed to do with all of these documents and everything?! […]
Who is to blame for this loss? Is it your fault? Is it someone or something’s fault? This is the blame stage and it’s hard, but you really have to go through it to get it out of your mind and find peace within. Exploring it won’t change what happened but it helped me to […]
We grow up with beliefs of what our lives should look like. That’s the problem right there with expectations. I pictured my life to be normal like my parents – grow up in a nice family, go to college, get married to the love of my life, have a bunch of kids, raise them, retire, […]
Let the year-long roller coaster ride begin! Oh wait- it may last longer than that. Emotions after a loss are crazy! I was listening to a lecture on stress and it said that we all can take and even kinda like some stress. Many people like to go on roller coasters at amusement parks. Why? […]
Dreaming after a loss. Some days I hated to go to sleep because I knew in the morning I would wake up to a huge thud in my heart when I realized this truly was happening- my husband had passed away. After the loss, I had weird dreams. Often I dreamed he was still alive […]
This major change of loss rocked my world. And my beliefs. It made me step back and look at my beliefs from a completely new perspective. I never even considered that my core beliefs could change. Or some could even be false. Wow- this is eye-opening! The dictionary describes belief as an opinion or conviction. […]
I have read many comments on my social media groups of people who take their loved one’s suicide personally. I know it’s easy to do, because I did it, too. I think it is all a part of the grieving process. I learned from years of reading books how the word SHOULD ought to be […]
Change is uncomfortable. But this earthly life we are living is changing all the time. Change is especially prominent after the loss of a spouse or loved one. Pretty much everything changes- who we wake up to, who we communicate with daily, and who we put all of our love into. One of my favorite […]
I didn’t know anyone who had taken their own life. Suicide is one of those words that is not talked about- it has a bad stigma. Again I found myself wondering why do we think of suicide in such a terrible way? Spiritual- I learned when growing up in my church that suicide is murder. […]
Say “YES, PLEASE!” to those who are offering help when you lose a loved one. This is hard for some people to do. We are used to saying we can do it all, but at this time in your life after you have lost a spouse you can really use the help. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE […]
There is a real stigma surrounding mental illness and suicide. It is scary to speak about suicide. If I talk about it, will people think less of me and my family? Will others believe me? I have been scared to let others know the family secret. For years I have been asked by many family […]
Nobody wants to be a tattle tale or be someone who can’t be trusted with secrets. But what if it is a really important life-and-death secret? I was 17 and my friend told me he wanted to commit suicide. I was good at secret keeping and had no idea what to do with this information. […]
