I am....

Flashback photo memories are a bittersweet gut punch every morning. I’ve considered ignoring them but I think it’s important, for me at least, to see the reminder, feel the feeling(s), and acknowledge both the joy and the grief that the photos bring me.  Pete and I went on some incredible trips. There are a lot of photos. A LOT.  Right now I’m in the midst of the four year anniversary of our one month trip to Europe. We were going to go back next year for our ten year anniversary.  What I’ve struggled with this week is this question: “How do you bail on a life that includes Trdelnik ice cream cones?”  Obviously, it’s not just the cone. It’s the vacations, the ballgames, the family events, the quiet walks on the perfect spring evening when the clouds are so puffy and white they look like they were drawn by Pixar artists? How do you tap out of that life? How do you make that choice? Then you remember that mental illness doesn’t give a shit about an ice cream cone.  Prior even to his fina

This may seem sacrilegious to say but I did not like my husband the day he died. Or the day before. Or maybe even for most of the few weeks ahead of his death. I loved him, yes, but I did not like the version of him that I was living with at all. Not even a little bit.  I was hopeful that after he worked through the grief, and the mania, and the relapses that I could figure out a way back to the comfortable camaraderie we had for much of our marriage but that I also needed to be a realist and understand that I was losing a lot of my own mental health gains in this relationship and needed to protect myself.  This may seem insulting to the dead but when I bemoaned to my therapist that “I did not understand how spouses who actually liked their partners went back to work quickly after their death because I still feel somewhat disembodied by the whole thing” she said “It’s actually often easier for people that are in healthy relationships.”  I sat with that for a minute and said “maybe that

Easter has never really been my holiday. I gave up religion years ago and I gave up this holiday in exchange for Thanksgiving in my divorce negotiations. So, while today is a holiday, it’s not one that I associated with any real traditions but it is the first one that I’ve flown solo. Maybe it’s a gift to have a gentle introduction into all of the social media happy family posts be of pastel colors and jelly beans and that by the time we reach turkeys and trees I’ll be settled into this new routine.  I think in this whole transition I’m also coming to terms with the fact that I’ve never truly been on my own.  I met my first husband at 18, married him at 20, had kids at 22 and 23, divorced at 33, had primary custody of the kids as a single mom, remarried at 38, widowed at 46. And, while I wouldn’t change a thing about the path that led to my children, I think that the challenges I’m facing right now might be easier to navigate if I’d spent more than a minute (and part of every other wee

I am a 46 year old widow. I am neither a young widow, with a life of tragic possibility and young children to raise, or an older widow mourning the loss of the only love she’s ever known. I am someone who deeply loved a very damaged man for ten years before he took his own life.  I am finding that I am struggling to not quantify our relationship by the limited amount of years together that we actually had. I did plan on growing old with this man. I’d stopped dying my hair, stopped wearing anything that wasn’t designed for cozy living, hell, I started wearing Crocs.  I was comfortable in my skin for, maybe, the first time in my life. He was my favorite travel companion. We had found a peaceful home that we both loved. He had his first grand baby and another on the way - I got to be “Grandrea”.  He was a protector, a bit of a clown, definitely rough around the edges. We challenged each other, we were both in our own therapy, battling our own demons, talking them through, getting stronger