Josh Groban sings, and powerful tears surge in my belly tonight, lubricate my eyes, unexpectedly. I’m not surprised, I wondered if this would come sometime in my 21 day #DisruptTheGap. All day I’ve thought of faces I love and who love me. On this rainy night, after gazing at the…
It was my long week of anniversaries: an adoption date, a wedding anniversary for a marriage that ended in divorce, and the eighth anniversary of my teenage son’s death by suicide. Annually, when this week cycles, I have learned to lean-in and ride the emotional wave, taking care of my…
I’m celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas, thinking about present time, and made a list of 12 practical life learnings–gifts–gleaned from what I’m calling my silent years, 2009-2012. Why the list? I moved to Alaska in 2007, and with the assistance of the sturdy and wild landscape, hibernated. I am…
The night before my son died, I opened mail, standing in the kitchen. My boy sat at a round table, watching. Soup heated on the stove. I had worked all day, and needed to attend a class later that evening. He had stayed home from high school, sick with the…
Last week I spoke at a church in town. They asked me to talk about grief and loss, for ten to fifteen minutes—make it personal. An icy, snowy night, by 7:00 p.m. it had been dark three hours. My stamina was in the single digits, and I was cold. A…