TUNE IN: APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY | STITCHER Have you ever found yourself in a place or experience that you never could have predicted? Can you look back on moments in your life and laugh about the irony or be grateful that your story continued on? Perhaps there's been places of heartbreak and hardship but also moments of joy you never anticipated? There are so many things that have happened in my short time on this earth that I never ever thought I'd experience. These surprises …
Before Me vs. After Me
TUNE IN: APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY | STITCHER Have you lost yourself, or even your joy, after a hard season? It's so easy for this to happen, and even part of the process of becoming a new creation. When you lose yourself after something hard, how can you rediscover who you've now become? Hard things change you. We gain a new perspective and new parts of us. Old parts die, new parts come to life. How do we let go of 'before me' while making space for 'after me'? How do you celebrate …
It Won’t Always Feel Like This
TUNE IN: APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY | STITCHER What do you say to yourself on hard days to shift your persepective? Do you have a mantra, a battle cry, you use for a pep talk? I do. And I've shared it with many friends going through hard times: a cancer diagnosis, grief, loss, becoming a young widow, waiting for a baby, to be a mom, sick kids and divorce. And now I'm going to share it with you... It won't always feel like this. Listen now to hear Becky talk about how this mantra …
What My Grief Taught Me
TUNE IN: APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY | STITCHER There is absolutely nothing about living through grief that is enjoyable. Living in grief feels like trudging through molasses, everything feels heavy and life moves in slow motion. I’m no stranger to living through events with unknown details, constantly reshuffled plans and a what feels like a roulette of outcomes. Maybe you’ve been there before too? Nothing is familiar. It’s maddening, isn’t it? What was once a sense of security now feels like a …
What My Grief Taught Me, Pt 3
Part Three: Freedom I always feared losing my husband. He was so much a part of me I couldn’t imagine what life would be like without him. He was a huge sense of security for me, like you’d find in any deep rooted relationship. He was a grounding point, a constant. I couldn’t imagine my life without him because I built my whole life around him. Yet one of the strangest things was uprooted through my grief in losing him. It was freedom. When your worst fears are realized you …
What My Grief Taught Me, Pt 2
Part Two: Gratitude It’s so easy to take things for granted, isn’t it? It can happen so slowly that we don’t even notice it. The simplest things, things that can bring the most joy, slip into the background and are so commonly passed over. A healthy body, a hug, someone to sit along side you, a sweetly scribbled post it note on the counter or a kiss on the forehead. When simple pleasures are replaced by the demands of the calendar or the items on the unending to do list, we lose something. We …
The Other Side
I feel split in two. There’s me ‘before’ and me ‘after’, heartache drawing the line between my two halves. Loss and grief lacing the parameters of what sets my worlds apart. I try to contain it, compartmentalize it even but it feels like trying to hold liquid in my hands. The desire to be fully seen and deeply known is hard to shake. Loneliness pings my heart and intensifies as the night sky darkens. My inner critic arrives as the stars come out reminding me of all the ways I fell short …
Rock Bottom to ‘Top of the Rock’
I stood at the base of the Rockefeller Center building and looked up the 67 floors to the top. This tower is a prominent feature of the New York City skyline. It was hard to really understand how massive and complex this building was. My son, Dawson, and I walked through the revolving glass doors and made our way to the ticket counter. In celebration of Dawson’s 10th birthday, I let him choose a destination to visit for a few days, just the two of us. I had read something years earlier …
Missing Pieces
Widow. I despise that title. I don’t like how it sounds. I don’t like how it looks and I most certainly don’t like how it feels. I thought ‘widow’ was reserved for women in their 90s that lost their soulmate peacefully in their sleep, not for a 33 year-old women, single mom of two sans her childhood sweetheart. I avoid using that word at all costs. I flip stories, make detours and duck out of conversations that might include that ‘title.’ I want nothing to do with it. To me, widow …