I am....

On December 14th I announced I was leaving real estate to explore new opportunities. I sent a blast announcement via social media and email to my past clients and my sphere. What I didn’t say in that message is that I was taking a break for my own mental health. I was burned out, I was exhausted, I was fighting through a depressive episode, I was spending a lot of time looking at career paths I might enjoy and, while I was good at real estate, I no longer found any joy doing it.  My plan was to take January and February to just relax, focus on introspection, detox from my phone and email. Maybe read a book, take some more photos, go on long, relaxing walks. My kids showed up on December 18th. We had a wonderful holiday that included bringing Grandpa to our new house for the first (and only) time. The knots in my shoulders started to unwind and I could feel some level of stress abating. The kids flew back to their respective homes for New Years, Pete and I had friends over for the first

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

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

August, 1944 - Scottsbluff, Nebraska - Barbara Neeley Journal Entry Someday years from now I will probably reread these pages and wonder why, in my youth, I thought I could write and attempted to put my thoughts and reactions into words. First, I assure myself very emphatically that I definitely have no talent along literary lines, and also that my extreme frankness sometimes could be described as almost brutal. These few pages do not develop into any particular story, except perhaps my own. Nor it is an autobiography (God forbid - I’m not that interesting). Shall we say it’s a “Collection of Recollections”. Frankly, one of the main reasons I want to write this is because I don’t want to entirely forget some of the interesting personalities whom I will describe later and I know I shall as the years pass. This little epistle started over three years ago. It starts then because that is when “yours truly” started to lead a double life. By this I mean that at times (evenings and w

I've been writing online for nearly 20 years now, which is hard to believe.  I have a 23 year old diploma that indicates I have a degree in English that sits, gathering dust, in my basement.  And now, as I'm working on my first book, I've been in a cerebral battle with myself as I say "I'm not a writer." I'm a real estate agent, a mom, a wife, an amateur chef, a former piano teacher, a blogger, a fill-in-the-blank with anything except a "real" writer. Except that is bullshit.  I'm a writer.  And I'm developing my craft.  I'm a long way from the great authors that line my bookshelves in my basement writing nook.  I'm probably even a long way from some of the crappy ones that I can't force myself to throw away. Thanks to my first ever creative writing class at Lighthouse Writers Workshop I'm developing a writing practice, I'm finding my voice, and my character's voices.  My current book project is a piece of h