I am in my 40s now. When I was in my 20s, both of my parents died within two years of each other. Before that I had moved home to become their full time caretaker. I cannot imagine having made any other choice; despite being fresh out of college and young with the whole world mine for the taking, I knew that the only important task I had to complete–the most important task–was to help my parents die.

I was very bad at it.

And while my parents were sometimes indifferent, sometimes hostile, sometimes genuine believers in God, I was not. I went to the church they went and became involved there not because I had any kind of religious faith or emotional connection, but because it was expected of me.

The truth is that no matter how hard I’ve looked or prayed or hoped, I’ve never believed in a supernatural being having any influence in my life at all. Or anyone else’s, for that matter, including my parents.

My book Grieving Futures can provide you with an in depth history of what I went through during and after my parents’ deaths, and I’ll be the first to say that it is not pretty. I was confused. I was lost. I was sometimes self-destructive and sometimes oblivious.

Grief is a bitch, my friend, make no mistake about that.

Yet through all of that, I never lost my atheism. I’ve practiced Buddhism and studied Judaism and read many sacred texts but my feelings about the natural world around me have never changed.

So now I’m in my 40s, still an atheist, forever an orphan, and recently divorced. I just finished getting my master’s degree, and I’m a freelance writer. I enjoy bicycling and yoga and writing fanfic. I have a cat.

The two constants in my life, though, are atheism and grief.

And so that’s kind of, sort of, what this blog is about.