Widowing Empty Nests

Greater Ease in Groups

April 26, 2024 No Comments

Photos my own – main image, Lake Skadar, Montenegro 8 July 2022 What is it that makes it easier, harder, or even impossible, to integrate, to participate in, to engage with, to be “fit for human consumption” in, a group? Not even two months ago, I wrote about a very challenging time I had had […]

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Residual Trauma

April 26, 2024 1 Comment

Photos my own. Main photo, Our Lady of the Rocks, 4 July 2022. And August 2017. 4 July 2022 I am not an expert in trauma, though I do try to keep up with the research and literature concerning how trauma affects the body, patterns of behaviour, transformation and healing. I try to keep up […]

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WeWe – or Widows Encouraging Widows’ Exploits

April 26, 2024 No Comments

Main image, Coniston Water, by Jonny Gios on Unsplash. Other photos from ChillSwim, Charlotte and me. 26 June 2022 I have been in the/my Motherland – England – these past days. It’s been wonderful. And it’s been weird. Though as I write, I have just crossed the border into Scotland at Gretna Green, and will […]

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Delegating, Abdicating, Collaborating, Co-Creating?

April 26, 2024 No Comments

Photo my own, taken today. Julia’s stones. 19 June 2022 My next ten days are packed (packed for me, anyway). Quite a bit of work in the coming days. A dinner out with new-to-me-friends of Medjool’s. Some travel to England and then on to Scotland. (My first trip to the UK since before the world […]

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Talking to the Dog – Again

April 26, 2024 1 Comment

16 June 2022 Photo of Black taken just now, in the shade of the evening… but you can see from the grass how hot it’s been Today, a sweltering hot-for-us day, as I turned up the stairs towards my home office and saw Black the dog outside in the garden, I called out to him, […]

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Three Years of Pleasure and Pain

April 26, 2024 No Comments

Main image by Zygimantas Dukauskas on Unsplash 12 June 2022 Yesterday, 11th June, is the day that Medjool has named “La Journée du ‘Oui’” (“’Yes’ day”). It is the day when, three years ago, in 2019, he chose me. I had already chosen him. Not chosen by default, simply because my sample size of prospective […]

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What You Should Know – revisited

April 26, 2024 No Comments

Main Image by Aron Visuals on Unsplash 6 June 2022 Italicised Section from Megan Devine: “I was talking the other day about the realities of the second and third years of grief. We have this erroneous (and stupid) cultural idea that grief will be over, or at least appreciably better, by the end of the […]

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“Worse Things Happen At Sea”

April 26, 2024 2 Comments

Pictures my own – and scanned hymn from my dad 3 June 2022 Growing up in Brussels in the 1970s and 1980s, there were a couple of sea-related sayings that were oft quoted in our family. Not that we lived close to the sea. Though we did cross the English Channel and the North Sea […]

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Swimming Me Home

April 26, 2024 2 Comments

Photos my own 30 May 2022 A few weeks ago, I was on a Swim Trek holiday in Mallorca, putting in some training for my “big swim” planned for the middle of July – crossing the Lac Léman/Lake Geneva at its widest point (13 km – a smidge over 8 miles). I do want to […]

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Inspired by Rosemerry’s Daughter

April 26, 2024 2 Comments

Photo by Juliane Liebermann on Unsplash 28 May 2022 I receive – and devour – the daily poems of the poet and storyteller, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. I first came across her work through Megan Devine’s weekly and monthly Writing Your Grief prompts. As is the way of the world, once you come across someone’s work, […]

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