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...

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...

Greetings From Ember & Bloom Hi friend, Today I want to tell you about something I got wrong for a long time — and what finally changed when I stopped fighting so hard. When Gary died, I was sure grief was something I would eventually get through. If I talked it out, kept busy, worked hard, journaled, held myself together well enough for long enough — surely it would fade. It does not work that way. I spent a long time trying to stay one step ahead of the pain, and the whole time, grief was...