A Year of Firsts

Rediscovering magic in the everyday.

Grief

  • Year One: That’s a Wrap

    Welcome back to January. I can’t believe it’s been a whole year since I started this writing journey.  Wait….that’s not true. I actually CAN believe it. I have felt every blessed minute of this past year. None of it flew by. Literally none of it. Even the parts that people usually say “wow, that flew… Read more

  • Grief over Missing Out

    Ever since I got COVID for the first time, I have noticed that all of my colds kind of play out the same way. I start getting lethargic, with a sore throat that I can kind of ignore. Then a fever, chills, and three days of searingly painful congestion set in. Every part of my… Read more

  • Wrapped

    Over the past week, my Instagram was flooded with my friends’ Spotify Wrapped images and videos. Do you get those?  Up until recently, I haven’t been a Spotify user, so I don’t get a “wrapped.” There certainly is something about December that makes you want to count up all of your goods and bads, successes… Read more

  • Influencer

    I hope you had a beautiful weekend. The last weekend of July is usually a big one. There’s lots of festivals, happenings, and get-togethers. This past weekend we celebrated my mother-in-law Martha’s life and art with family and friends at the Ruth Wells Center for the Arts, where Martha used to teach and live in… Read more

  • Death on Vacation

    It’s been challenging to write weekly over the summer. Partially because my daughter is home with me everyday and alone time is more scarce, and also because my brain is constantly boiling and after using it for the non-optional tasks, there is not much left. And yes, I do have AC, but somehow while that… Read more

  • Knots

    I remember my dad packing a bunch of something in the back of a truck with me. I don’t know if it was one of the many times I moved, or a vacation, or some other occasion where I was moving a bunch of stuff from point A to point B. He would remind me… Read more

  • Evolution of Grief

    This week has been a hard one. I saw this picture of the evolution of grief. It’s just meme psychology, of course, oversimplifying something really complicated. But the idea I liked was this: grief never really goes away, but we build our lives around it and learn to live with it. In this book on… Read more

  • Spring Check-in: Four months

    In February, I posted a two month check in so I decided to try that again. It was a nice mile marker for me. I used to really love doing my annual review at work. Not necessarily for the accolades, but I always enjoyed the exercise of reviewing my goals, writing down what I had… Read more

  • Heavenly Birthday

    This Sunday, during Easter celebrations, my Dad will celebrate his first heavenly birthday, turning 77 on the other side.  Fitting in a lot of ways – he passed on Christmas Eve, the day before the holiday of birth, and his birthday is on Easter, the holiday celebrating death and resurrection. He was a lefty, so… Read more

  • Sinking Into The Sea

    Experiencing so many losses so close together has primed my brain for any messages about the afterlife. The other night, watching The White Lotus (I know…so profound) with my husband I heard the speech by a Buddhist monk, which is decidedly not in keeping with Buddhist writings, but is still pretty nice:  “When you’re born,… Read more