Category: <span>Uncategorized</span>

The Girl with No Name

March 28, 2024 No Comments

11 September 2019 “I don’t have a name. I don’t know what to do. I am not the person I used to be…” (part of a prompt from Megan Devine’s Writing Your Grief course) Featured image courtesy of Sarah Treanor (streanor.com) Actually, I do have a name, and it’s Emma. It’s the same name that […]

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In The Past 24 Hours….

March 28, 2024 No Comments

7 September 2019 A day in the life of a serial griever… In the past 24 hours… …I collected my youngest daughter’s “personal effects” from the clinic she’d been attending …I was told that her death by suicide most probably wasn’t pre-meditated, but an “on the spur of the moment” action …I learned that my […]

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Projection

March 28, 2024 1 Comment

8 September 2019 I am often stunned by how much projection there is around, even though, as a mere mortal, I engage in it all the time myself. Of course there is projection! The world is complex and messy. It’s all we can do to put meaning on it by interpreting it through our eyes, […]

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La Rentrée

March 28, 2024 No Comments

2 September 2019 First posted on Soaring Spirits, Widow’s Voice Blog.https://www.soaringspirits.org/la_rentr_e In France, where I live, early September, with its “back to school and back to work” is known as “la rentrée”. This week is “la rentrée”. Schools go back. Three-year olds begin pre-school, known here as “Maternelle”.  Six-year olds begin primary/”Primaire”. Eleven-year olds begin […]

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Clutching onto Solo-Parenting

March 28, 2024 No Comments

29 August 2019 First posted on Soaring Spirits, Widow’s Voicehttps://www.soaringspirits.org/clutching_on_to_solo_parenting These last few days have been a mad rush. I accompanied my “now youngest” daughter Megan, who is 18, to start university in the middle of the UK. We live in France, so it’s a bit of a schlep, and since we take a flight, […]

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So What if the Plane Goes Down?

March 28, 2024 1 Comment

Posted on 2 September 2019. Recorded in the middle of the night of 23-24 August 2019. 1h01 in the morning, on the 24th of August. Just woken from having the most frightening dream, where I was in some kind of a ship or else massive plane. I woke up really cold in the dream. I […]

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Shattered and Fragile, Though Not Completely Destroyed

March 28, 2024 6 Comments

28 August 2019 I had one of those experiences today that remind me of the fragility, the tenuous-ness of my well-being, my composure and stability. The experience made me cry, and cry hard. Sometimes I think I don’t cry enough. I probably don’t. I’ve never been much of a crier. I know how and when […]

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Just Another Screwy Sunday

March 28, 2024 No Comments

Photo of local run/walk under the Jura hills 25 August 2019 In 1986, back in the last millennium, back when there were dinosaurs, there was a popular song by The Bangles – “Manic Monday”.  In the song, the lead singer wants to go back to Sunday. “It’s just another manic Monday I wish it was […]

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Healing Hurts

March 28, 2024 1 Comment

17 August 2019 I often receive wise, warm words from friends. One friend, John C, yesterday wrote about how nothing in his grief is linear or predictable. Another, Mee-Yan, commented on the co-existence of strength and fragility, and the simultaneousness of myriad, varied emotions. And yet another, Laurence, wrote about the co-existence of ecstatic happiness […]

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Finding my (New) Community that I didn’t know Existed

March 28, 2024 2 Comments

Featured Photo by Sarah Treanor (streanor.com) 10th August 2019 A need has been bubbling to the surface of my consciousness these past days as our “holiday” in the Dominican Republic draws to a close and my mind and heart, inevitably, lurch to “back home-ness”. As the incomprehension of my cumulative losses begins to make itself […]

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