Greetings From Ember & Bloom After my husband died, people crossed my lines because they did not know where those lines were. And honestly, sometimes I did not know either. Grief changed so much about me. What I could handle. What I wanted to talk about. How much energy I had. Even what I needed from the people who loved me. A boundary is simply knowing what is okay for you and what is not. Then you tell the other person. I had a friend who kept asking when I was going to get back to...
11 days ago • 1 min read
Greetings From Ember & Bloom Hi there, I've been thinking a lot about the widows I talk with who are leaders. Superintendents. Nurses. Accountants. The ones holding families together while their own world has shifted. And there's something they all say to me. Most of us believe we have to make a choice: either we show up for work, or we grieve. Either we're strong, or we're falling apart. Either we hold it together, or we break. But what if that's not the choice at all? What if grief isn't...
18 days ago • 1 min read
Greetings From Ember & Bloom Hi friend, Today I want to ask you the question I ask nearly every widow I sit with. It sounds simple. It almost never is. What do you want for yourself? When I ask that, I'm often met with silence. Sometimes a little laugh, like she thinks she should already know. Sometimes just, "I don't know." And that makes complete sense. For a long time, life was about we. Then he died, and the future you were walking into died with him. So of course "what do you want now"...
25 days ago • 1 min read
Greetings From Ember & Bloom Hi friend, Today I want to talk about the guilt that shows up in a surprising place. Not when things fall apart. When they start, just barely, to feel okay again. The first time I laughed after Gary died, I caught myself and stopped cold. How could I laugh? How could anything be funny? He's gone. Maybe you've been there. The coffee tastes almost right again. You catch yourself humming. And for one second, something in you feels almost normal. Then the guilt lands...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Greetings From Ember & Bloom Hi friend, You may have noticed this is landing later than usual. There's a story there, and it turned into this week's whole message. For the first time since January, I completely forgot to write my blog and send my Monday note. It just slipped my mind. And instead of beating myself up about it, I did something different. I gave myself grace. That got me thinking about all the reasons we forget to be gentle with ourselves. And then, floating around a lazy river...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Greetings From Ember & Bloom Hi friend, Today I want to talk about a loss that surprised me. Not losing Gary. The second one. The one that came after. In the first two weeks after Gary died, my phone never stopped. Then around week six, it got quiet. And some of the people I was most sure of, the ones I would have bet everything on, I never heard from again. If that's happened to you, you know how much it stings. You start lying awake keeping a list of who called and who didn't. And you start...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Greetings From Ember & Bloom Hi friend, Today I want to talk about a word that gets handed to widows like a gift. And how heavy that gift can get to carry. Strong. You're so strong, I don't know how you do it. People mean it kindly, every time. But after Gary died, that word slowly stopped feeling like a compliment and started feeling like a job. Something I had to keep living up to, even on the mornings I could barely get out of bed. Then one ordinary day, I hit a wall. I was just tired....
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
You get to hear this first... Hi friend, I've been keeping a secret from you. Not a big scary one. A good one. I have started a podcast. It's called Widow's Permission Slips. Each episode is short, and each one builds to a single permission slip. Something you're allowed to do, or feel, or stop doing. The kind of permission nobody hands you after your person dies, so we're going to hand it to ourselves. There are five episodes waiting for you right now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, and...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Greetings From Ember & Bloom Hi friend, Today I want to talk about a kind of lonely that surprised me. The kind that doesn't go away when the room is full. After Gary died, I could be surrounded by people who loved me and still feel completely alone. For a long time I didn't understand why. Company helped for a little while, and then the visit would end, everyone would go home, and the empty feeling came back sharper than before. It took me a while to figure out what was really going on. It...
2 months ago • 1 min read