Aftermath: Pets I Have Known (Grieving Futures)
Dealing with the pets after my parents died was just the beginning of my realization that grief was not just something that hit me at night, in the dark under the covers: it reached out into every mundane aspect of my life.
Grieving Futures, post #3
This is part one of the first chapter, “Circumstances”, in which I give some background on my story and what happened with my parents. I discuss in graphic detail their illnesses and deaths, so heed that warning.
Scared to Sprint
I was hit recently with an interesting insight that had never occurred to me: I don’t just hate how I look. No, I’m scared of my body…
Sometimes figure things out is the hard part
Anyway, to figure out what I love, I had to be ready to defend it, something that was difficult to do when I was not even sure of what I loved yet.
Getting Walled In – or not
Knowing that you love something requires a certain level of confidence that isn’t needed to hate something; mostly, it requires self-knowledge. And that’s what makes it scary, I think…
What DO you want, anyway?
Quite frankly, if you don’t like something, be it a job or a diet or a financial situation, you know you don’t like it, and why. It’s practically instinctive, like my aversion to spiders and call-center jobs.
To hell with my resume
I know some bloggers talk about taking the risk of walking away from everything and carrying no baggage and trusting in the process, and good for them. Me, I want a roof over my damn head. I want to know that if I walk away, I have some place to come back to. Call me a traditionalist.
Grieving Futures, post #2
I always tried to project some overall sense of wholeness; that although I was in despair and thunderstruck by events, I still was still functioning. But it did not feel that way. I felt sectioned. A piece of me was here, another there. I lived the role of daughter, caretaker, maid, and free spirit but these roles did not mix well, especially after the reasons for several of those roles – my parents – were dead.
Hope for Tomorrow
Desperation is a plea for external solutions; hope is created on the inside…
REC Saturday: Arlynda Boyer
A few weeks ago I posted about the idea of “a safe place to break”, where you sometimes don’t actually deal with a traumatic life experience until much later when you have arrived at a place or time that is safe. That idea originated with a fellow New College alum and...
Grieving Futures, Post #1
Authoria: Grieving Futures is my free book detailing my experiences dealing with the deaths of my parents when I was in my mid-twenties. You can download it, share it, copy it, whatever you want. My goal has always been to make it as widely and freely available as...
Tragedy changes us; Patience tempers us; Fortitude keeps us going.
Lessons in grief, crisis, and recovery from 30 years of life as an adult orphan from a GenX woman who has resentfully struggled every step of the way.
