Widowing Empty Nests

Learning to Live Without a Map

April 19, 2024 2 Comments

Main image by Ali Elliott on Unsplash 13 March 2022 I love maps and I love metaphors. I love maps, orienteering maps in particular, though ones of mountainous areas and other rough terrain will do. I like maps that use colours, and the larger the scale, the more detail of the terrain shown, the better. […]

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My New Favourite Grief Model(s)

April 19, 2024 No Comments

5 March 2022 Main image by Олександр on Unsplash This week is the Climate Coaching Alliance Festival – from 3-8 March 2022. I’ve joined it for the third year running. I joined it in part because coaching with the climate and our planet’s well-being in mind is increasingly part of how I work. I joined […]

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The Shape of Her in Her

April 19, 2024 No Comments

Photos my own from this week by Lac Léman/Lake Geneva 27 February 2022 One of my favourite writing prompts in Megan Devine’s 30-day Writing Your Grief programme comes on Day 28. So close to the end, when much excavation of one’s ever-changing emotions, thoughts, feelings and sensations has already gone on. The prompt starts with […]

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Sometimes…

April 19, 2024 No Comments

Photos by me this weekend – the exact spot I was with Edward. I have one with him grinning widely. I cannot find it. For now. But I will. 20 February 2022 Sometimes when I come to reflect on what to write about each week, I just know. I know – yes – THIS is […]

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Creating the Community I Crave

April 19, 2024 1 Comment

13 February 2022 Photo of Gordon, Michelle & me at Soaring Spirits International’s Camp Widow, Toronto, November 2018 Back in the early days of widowing, as I heard the likes of Megan Devine talk about the importance of community, my reaction was something along the lines of “Hrrrmph”. I didn’t get it. I didn’t quite […]

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Throwing out decades of memories

April 19, 2024 8 Comments

Main image by Susan Q Yin on Unsplash 6 February 2022 Our house has long needed a lick of paint, new staining and varnish on wooden floors and stairs, mouldy patches on bathroom ceilings scraped off and refreshed with white paint, new lights/lighting, new curtains sewn so that they match better with whatever is around… […]

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Choosing Love

April 19, 2024 1 Comment

Main picture by Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash 30 January 2022 January’s Monthly Prompt from Megan Devine & Refuge in Grief for Grieflings who have been through her 30-day Writing your Grief Programme https://refugeingrief.com/writing-your-grief/ “For decades, my parents have said they wouldn’t get new dogs or cats when the ones they had died. Their last dog […]

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If Only…

April 19, 2024 3 Comments

Photos our own, taken over the years. Main photo with baby Ben, (2000). I have so few photos of us just sitting in bed, when it happened so often. Other photos taken by the kids or friends over the years. I treasure these photos. 22 January 2022 I have many terrible dreams. Night-time dreams, I […]

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2022 Is The Year Of….Lovely Work

April 19, 2024 4 Comments

Image by Jen Theodore on Unsplash We are far enough into January now to no longer be seeing quite so many stories of New Year’s Resolutions. What a relief. I can better tolerate stories of New Year’s Intentions – which seem to be more flexible, more humane. Intentions seem to offer more malleability, more wiggle […]

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“Go Get Yourself A Bigger Problem”

April 19, 2024 1 Comment

Photos by Jane del Pozo – at La Maison de Tara and at Ed’s home (Oct & Dec 2015) 9 January 2022 Back in the early 1990s, I worked for a couple of years post-Masters, in a small consulting firm of organisational psychologists in Cambridge. One of my colleagues – let’s call her Terri – […]

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