The MRI came back clean, meaning that I do not have soft tissue cancer. I am immensely grateful for this reality, but it has also been hard to focus on gratitude since the reality of a divorce and pending custody trial has been coloring the past month of my life. The thing about grief is…
A few months after Cece was born, a depression developed in my upper thigh that looked like abnormal muscle or fat loss. My primary care physician referred me to an osteopath who ordered an MRI to rule out soft tissue cancer, which affects 3,000-4,000 people in this country every year. Last night, my big sister…
For no particular reason, the last few days have been very difficult. I find myself crying more often than usual and shaking my head in wordless, dumb frustration at the total irreversibility of what has happened. There is a piercing quality to memories of her, which still surface constantly, which are simultaneously unbearable and so…
There is a mama doe and her two fawns that live outside of my sister’s house. I see them almost every day, when driving home from an appointment, when leaving to go on a walk, when taking a piece of mail to the mailbox in the evening, or when stepping outside in the morning sunshine…
“Take this sinking boat and point it homeWe’ve still got timeRaise your hopeful voice, you have a choiceYou’ll make it now Falling slowly, eyes that know meAnd I can’t go backAnd moods that take me and erase meAnd I’m painted blackWell, you have suffered enoughAnd warred with yourselfIt’s time that you won.” – “Falling Slowly”…
In the early months after Lizzy’s death, people would ask if I prayed or talked to Lizzy as a spirit, soul, angel, or saint. I always said “No” in response to this because Lizzy was still too human, too real, too much a toddler to be a spirit. Every second was rampant with memory of…
What we celebrate today as Halloween has its origins in the Celtic festival of Samhain, when people lit bonfires, told ghost stories, and dressed in costumes to ward off ghosts. It was celebrated on October 31 (the day before the Celtic New Year on November 1) as the final celebration of the harvest before winter….
I watched Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ last night. I know some people may think this was a very unwise decision, while some people may get it. For me, it was a way of entering into my faith, especially Our Lady’s experience of suffering through every single step of her Son’s Passion. It…
“How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when, in your heart, you begin to understand… there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep… that have taken hold.” – Frodo in The Return of the King…
For six months I have lived with the terror of fearing that I may have done something or not done something that contributed to or caused Lizzy’s death. For six months, people surrounding me have gone down countless theoretical rabbit holes trying to define the “what-ifs” and “what-could-have-beens” that may, given the butterfly effect, have…