Storm Clouds A-brewin'

I meant to blog yesterday. I tried. It wasn't for lack of material but lack of...energy?
will?
drive?
All of the above?

I blame it on the calendar.

I was doing ok for a while and now July 9th looms large on the horizon.

These days, grief comes and goes. I've actually gotten to a point where the day-to-day is pretty tolerable.

But it's the holidays that get you. They're the real challenge.

The storm clouds started brewing over the weekend and seem to have come to rest over the house. At the moment, it all just seems to be sitting there. Waiting. It's like a big weight sitting on my shoulders. It's exhausting. I came home last night intending to answer emails and write reports and blog and exercise and fold laundry. I did none of that. I sat on the couch reading a book and watching TV.

The only benefit of the passage of time is that you have some experience to help you gauge your feelings. It really is all relative.

We'll talk about this further over the next week or two. Trust me. But I'll leave you with this: I don't need virtual {{{{{HUGS}}}}} or pity or sympathy. I will cry a lot in the next few weeks. I may be a bit grumpy. I may be a bit distracted. I may not work at my peak performance level.

This much I know is true: I know that I'm a strong survivor.

If I've learned anything lately, it's that a few storm clouds aren't going to hold me back.

I can handle a hurricane. It just might mean hunkering down for a few days.

The Edge of Seventeen

It's that time of year when the blog musings center on my grief journey. Every year, it seems like we are busy with end-of-the-year school activities and the start of summer, planning vacations, and then (kablam)...it's almost July 9. Grief is funny. Grief is weird. I remember very early after Charlotte died, I watched the movie Rabbit Hole. There's an amazingly poignant scene where Nicole Kidman's character is talking with another woman who lost a child over 10 years before (played by Dianne Wiest). She talks about grief being like a brick in your pocket. It never goes away. Sometimes you can even forget it's there. But it comes back and makes its presence known from time to time. And (she says) "it's what you have of them." I probably did not fully realize then what a powerful and true analogy that is. As time goes on, our grief changes. Yet, it is always there on the edge of things. It sits in that pocket and sometimes makes itself known. This

Bittersweet Sixteen

I think about Charlotte every single day. However, this time of year, I'm flooded with all kinds of memories as we commemorate the anniversary of her birth. This year feels like a bit of a milestone. Sixteen. If cancer had not taken her life back in 2010, I have a feeling I would be planning a massive birthday celebration this year. 16 always feels like a landmark year in someone's life. I have been thinking a great deal about the last birthday party we had for Charlotte in 2009. We didn't know it at the time, but we were halfway through her treatment journey. We had been through three major brain surgeries and a few rounds of inpatient chemotherapy. Treatments were not going well. In fact, right after her birthday, we would make the trip to Houston, Texas where we would settle in for about 10 weeks of proton beam radiation treatments and a new customized chemotherapy protocol. This was the unspoken "last chance option" to beat that aggressive brain tumor into

Tis the Season for Leaks

Now that we've had a few posts to settle in with one another, let's get personal, shall we? It's almost an understatement to say that this has been a difficult year. The last few weeks, especially, brought back a flood of memories. This time last year, we were in the home stretch . We were watching our daughter die. I have spent the weeks since Thanksgiving thinking of our final days with her. I miss her terribly. I miss her laugh and her smile and her stories. I cry a lot. This is going to sound funny but I don't cry the way I used too. In the past, if I got upset, you would KNOW that I was upset. Now, it just kind of leaks out. I'll be sitting somewhere: waiting in line at the store, working, driving in my car....and the tears just start to flow. I don't even necessarily "break down" and sob. I just leak. Anything can trigger the leak. Usually it's a memory of Charlotte. Sometimes I'm reminded of a child or a family i

I See What You Meme

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