My Journey Continues

I lay in bed on my back in the dark, unable to sleep.   I close my eyes and see black so I squint to see something that is in-between life and darkness.   I calm my mind, readying to talk to God, an unknown force of which I don’t know how to conceptualize. I am gearing up to beg for my daughter’s life.   I feel unworthy, lost in the space separating a modern world and the stories of the bible.   Why?   I scream in my head silently, Why are you doing this?   I wonder if I’m in hell. Take me! Take me instead if you need a life. I plead, My baby is so young…her babies need her…take me!   I hear nothing and I struggle with believing anyone discerns my desperation, feeling my thoughts are ineffectual and useless. I yearn with the deep part of my soul that I can connect with an unseen spirit to help me.   But a part of me knows I will not see an angel, I will not see God, I will not see Dean and I know that she will die. Mayb...

Sooo ….you might have noticed I stopped writing for the last one hundred and eighteen days.  I just couldn’t physically write a word, and it’s as if I unconsciously put a cork in my brain to stop the flow of nonstop shit that relentlessly flowed from my memory banks. I guess it was natures way of letting me take a break and heal. I have been working on my second book, which is not about grief by the way, but filled with older, past memories that kept the grieving wound open and festering. I t was nice for a while, to not dissect every well-meaning thought to be written down, but the urge to say what I needed to say, silently prompted me to start writing and sharing once again. Naturally, my thoughts touched on why I felt the need to stop the chatter and I realized I was ashamed of my grief. I was…am… embarrassed of my sadness…and more recently…my happiness …the fact that life continued to move forward without my husband, father and daughter just felt wrong. ...

                                          Courtesy of Unsplash - Samuel Zeller  My husband has stopped haunting me. No more lights going off and on, furniture vibrating, owls hooting outside my window before every event, vivid visitation dreams of us being together or his smell floating around me in a movie theater. I am angry. I feel like he left me all over again. His visitations were the only thing that got me through his absence. That, and the knowledge that he was still with me. It ended six months ago, two years and two months after his death, when I moved into my latest home. It’s a perfect home for me, with grand living room ceilings, open kitchen with three ovens and a perfect size backyard that doesn’t overwhelm me to maintain. It’s shaped like an L, due to the three-car garage, a style Dean and I talked about building many times after retirement. I knew as...

Photo by  Trust "Tru" Katsande  on  Unsplash T here seems to be no lack of motivational, self-improvement publicity out in the world lately.   Abraham Hicks, spirituality, posted affirmations on social media, mediums on TV and more, but the one thing I am trying to learn is meditation. My ability to blank my mind and focus on nothing but breathing is a challenge and yet when I can last at minimum of five minutes, I feel the benefit of calmness wash over me.    Zen, Mindfulness, Metta (kind), Mantra, Transcendental, Yoga, Sound, Kundalini…the list goes on there are so many to try, but I always come back to the standard sit and relax pose.   Recently, I was having a sad moment in the gym and  decided to incorporate meditation into my workout. Since I still suffer from grief in some form every day, I found that meditation redirects my energy and grounds my mind very quickly.   I decided to jump on one of the stationary bikes at ...

Sometimes I have to wonder what in the hell my dog thinks about all day? C ady is an eleven year old female yellow Labrador and I have had her since she was 3 months old, her birthday being June 30th, 2007.  When I "adopted" her as a puppy, I gifted her to my husband Dean.  He was a dog person, someone who had a dog most of his life and loved them like children.  I, on the other hand, had never had one.  I was a horse person, which I consider much easier than a dog because they don't demand my emotional attention as much. But together, Dean and I got through the early years of potty training, jumping on guests and discipline, well, mostly Dean handled that stuff.  I got to be the fun parent.  HE rubbed her belly, teased her and took care of the poop stuff.  I took her running and hiking when he wasn't around, fed her way too many treats and she drove shotgun on errands with me around town. Since losing my husband, I have struggled with being ...

I have taken a hiatus from writing as of late.  Mainly because it forces me to delve deeply into my feelings and that causes me pain.  I so wanted my trip to Spain to be a pivotal turning point in my life.  I had tricked myself into believing that for a short while, but reality has a way of forcing its presence.  I grieved hard the last six months and was spiraling further before I left, luckily the vacation in itself was an energy distraction and helped set me back on life's course.  Unfortunately, it did not last.  Life has been a whirlwind of selling my home and rental property, buying a new place to live and packing.  I took a kickboxing class and joined another online grief group.  I continue to pump out drawings in my spare time and watch a lot of movies on Hulu.  The days blur together and I have those moments of "what is the point of living?"  There is boredom of life in grief. I most recently purchased a large bottle of ...

I most recently took a break from my life and went on a trip to Spain.   After severe grief for 783 days since Dean passed, 762 days since Dad passed and 156 days since Tia left my world, I thought a vacation might change the energy of my chronic anguish.   I have to say, leaving town put my emotional state on pause, with occasional bursts of tears that I hid behind my sunglasses and from well intentioned eyes.   The excitement of visiting a country of my heritage was a distraction and I crossed one more thing off my bucket list.   I didn’t intentionally block my feelings, but focused on all that was new and exciting around me. I wanted to feel alive and happy.   The visit to my father’s ancestor’s homeland was amazing and magical.   But after eighteen days, I was ready to come home. As I merged back into my normal routine, I was frustrated that sadness had seeped back into my soul.   I felt I had turned a corner on my emotional ...