Learning to live after loss; rediscovering me; I am NOT the same.
After we lost Charlie to ALS and after going through everything that entailed, my ideas about life – what it means, what I want… – all that changed. I didn’t want to feel like life was this never-ending struggle of futility – striving to attain some manufactured sense of achievement.
Leave a CommentOur emotions mimic a roller coaster; there are hills and valleys, excitement and fear. No aspect of life has the ability to maintain a constant state of perfection – not relationships, not the weather, not our health. I wonder sometimes if we’ve become such a hedonistic culture that we are incapable of allowing ourselves to sit for any amount of time in our negative feelings? Whatever those may be – fear, loss, anger, guilt, envy, rejection, or…loneliness. Sometimes, the only way to successfully work through those negative emotions is to acknowledge them, feel them, and in some cases, honor them. Sometimes the main reason you can spot the good is because you remember, so acutely, what it felt like to live the bad.
2 Comments“there are those of us who go into beast mode with the sole purpose to burn ALS to the ground. We welcome the challenges, the events, the walks, the rides, because it’s our way of shaking our metaphorical fist at ALS and saying, “You don’t get to win!” We emerge from our first battle bent, but not broken. Our hearts are bruised, but still beating. Our hurt scars us deeply, but our healing…it is transcendent.”
1 CommentAfter Charlie died, and I was working on Finding My Reflection, I realized that, amongst the deep well of grief at his loss, was the…
Leave a CommentI woke up on May 26th to the news that a black man, named George Floyd, died in police custody while being held down by…
Leave a CommentThis weekend marked a Race for Research event for ALS TDI. Had COVID-19 not derailed all social functions, this would have been a 5K run…
Leave a CommentIt’s a sincere question, truly. No censure or shaming here. I ask because…well…it’s a tough thing for me to do. I never gave myself the…
1 CommentOn the day we went to the E.R., he could only keep breathing by standing and bending over, rocking back and forth to manually keep his diaphragm working just enough to move oxygen into his lungs and keep his body going. Picture using your body to manually operate your lungs much like a blacksmith uses bellows to deliver oxygen to his fire. But we knew it wouldn’t be enough. He wouldn’t be able to sustain it for long.
1 CommentIt’s funny how “time” plays such a surrealistic role in the perception of our human experiences. We’d only been gone for eight months…yet it felt like it could have been eight years.
4 Comments“…sometimes, it takes being covered in something new…to reveal what you always thought was ordinary…is actually something extraordinary after all.”
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