loss

For When You’re Tired of Grief

Nothing triggers my grief quite so much as when my friends have more babies. To be clear: I don’t resent them. I wouldn’t even say I’m jealous, really. It’s just a reminder that I had hoped to raise a whole gaggle of children with my husband and that the option of having more kids was…

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For When You Don’t Know How To Grieve

After my dad died, I really struggled. Yes, I was sad and angry and grieving his loss. He had died on the East Coast 8 hours after my son was born on the West Coast. There was a big emotional burden to carry and I assumed if I could just live “normally,” the grief would…

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For When You’re Ready to Rediscover Yourself

Whether or not you’ve experienced loss, you can imagine the pain of grief. You can understand the sadness and disorienting feeling of someone you love being gone. And if you’ve watched someone have to let go of hopes for their life or letting a dream die, you know the feelings that come with grief are…

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For When Grief Hits From Out Of Nowhere

My dad died 10 years ago, now. A decade is too long of a time to not have one of your greatest cheerleaders or get one of his hugs. But 10 years out and my grief has changed. I don’t feel quite so hollowed out by it now. I don’t mistakenly call or text him….

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For When You’re Afraid of Leaving Them Behind

I get so mad when people use the phrase “moving on” when it comes to healing from grief. You don’t move on from your person (as if you could). They played a role in your life and you’ll carry them with you forever. Besides…a loss of any kind, whether a person, a job, a home,…

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For When You Start to Dream Again

I woke up January 1, 2016 – almost exactly one year after my husband died – thinking about the word ‘hope.’ What did it mean to hope when everything about life had already gone topsy turvy? I had already seen how hopes could get smashed, ground to a pulp, and dumped off a cliff –…

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Brave is a Choice

I’m not exaggerating when I say my life feels more like a Lifetime movie than reality. My dad died eight hours after giving birth to my first kid. My husband battled one kind of cancer the year we were engaged and died from another kind a month before our kid number two was born. I…

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When You’re Feeling the Damage of Burnout

Until recently, I thought burnout was a normal part of life. I had never even thought there could be a life without burnout. I would stoically push through stress and challenges until I crashed. Then I’d rest and recover only to do it all again. I’ve been learning a different kind of living in the…

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For When Grief Hits You From Out of Nowhere

It’s been almost four years since my husband died. I’m mostly doing great. I still get sad sometimes. Other times I’m disappointed or angry that this is my real life. But, on the whole, life is good. We’ve found new routines and ways of doing things. We feel settled. I skirt the edge of grieving,…

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Good Things Are Scary; Disappointment is Comfortable

I have a very serious fear of good things happening to me. You laugh, but I’m dead serious. I have a few really big dreams that feel completely impossible and I have no idea how (or if) they’ll ever work out. And so when some of these dreams started inching forward last week, I had…

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