I’m not entirely sure why, but I am very occupied with defining grief, as though understanding grief and its stages will somehow make this process easier. And no, I don’t need to be told how unlikely this is. I feel that the most complicated thing about grief is that the source of that which brought…
Since I was a teenager, I have re-read Madeline L’Engle’s A Ring of Endless Light every summer out of sheer love of the story. I am not sure how, but I don’t think I ever realized until now how much this book is about death. It has been helpful to re-read this book with the…
Lizzy was alive for two years. She has now been gone for two months. I do not know how convinced I am by the term “stages of grief.” My experience of grief vacillates between uncontrollable sobbing, numb desolation, acute and tearing despair, and a sort of manic and cowardly avoidance. I am getting better at…
I have been reading almost nonstop since the week after Lizzy’s funeral, alternating between books on grief, loss, and newborn and infant care. Books about Lizzy, books about Cecilia–back and forth. I just finished a book on grief by a woman named Marie Levine called First You Die about living after the death of your…
I have known my husband since I was 15, and for 15 years, until age 30, I believed I loved him more deeply, more desperately than I could ever love anyone else and more passionately than I ever had loved anyone else in my life. My love for him defined me, guided me, and informed…
Since I was in high school, I have loved Michelangelo’s works, particularly his Pieta. When studying abroad in college, I had the privilege and the blessing of being able to personally see this great statue during our trip to Rome. Every Pieta is a depiction of the Virgin Mary holding the dead and crucified body…
I named my second daughter Cecilia Amaris Brighde because Amaris means “given by God” and Brighde (pronounced Breed-ah) is the Gaelic spelling of Brigid, for St. Brigid of Ireland, who has always been a special saint to me. St. Brigid is one of the patron saints of Ireland (with St. Patrick), and is patroness of…
For more than a decade, I have desired and believed motherhood to be my vocation. I felt very strongly called to it my final year in undergraduate, and since then, have collected books, toys, educational items, and even clothing for the children I wanted so badly. I jotted down homeschooling ideas, researched homebirth, and read…