Grieve Like A Badass

Send a textAn interview with a 20 year old growing up in today's world.  His thoughts on dating, social media, religion, and self growth.

Send a textWe've been MIA...trying to figure out how to be married living apart.  Not epic!  But we've learned a lot.  Going over the top few things this has taught us so far and why we think people who are married living together can benefit from the hard lessons we've learned along the way.  

Send a textInvite empathy to your party, self pity always shows up uninvited, trashes the place, eats all the finger foods, and always tells jokes that make it awkward. Show self pity the door, it has no place at your table or mine.   

Send a textBut, my friends, the demons can be tamed. We have the ability to drain them of their power. Intentional, deliberate healing. Making healing our full time job. Healing comes slowly and it is always hard fought. The more we run from them, ignore them, or deny they exist…we only Prolong our suffering and increase our struggle.

Send a textMuch of what you wish for, hope for…is on the other side of arming yourself with a good ol’ life- weathered map, lovingly and painfully charted with your own hand.  

Send a text1st Interview with the man himself, Jason.  We got married about 2 months ago and he will be cohosting me in the future, so I thought it would be good to kick off an interview episode with him.  He talks about his journey and how he got to the version of himself he is today.  Dude is a legend.  

Send a textSimple version of my story, why any of this matters to me, and what you can expect moving forward.  

Send a textIt is with a heavy heart that brings me to Facebook once again to announce the passing of one of my own. Sometimes our lives take strange, winding roads.  Sometimes, we find ourselves in places we never imagined in our wildest of dreams.  Sometimes, life takes our breath away for wonderful reasons and sometimes for horrible reasons.  Sometimes, we feel as though life is cruising in the sunshine and sometimes it feels as though the torrent is unrelenting.  Sometimes, we turn a corner to find unexpected horror and sometimes unexpected beauty.  

Send a textToday's  message is this:MagicStillExistsIn TheWorldJust like life can change in a moment for the worse, so it can with good.  You never know what awaits you in the next moment. If you choose to find it, if you choose to seek it, if you choose to change the way you see yourself and others, if you choose to…you will find magic.  It’s everywhere.  Little geocaches carefully placed by a loving Heavenly Father to keep hope and awe and wonder alive in a world that wants you to feel dark. 

Send a textA wise widow friend once told me…”Grief has it’s demands and it will get them one way or another.”  Over time I have added upon that wisdom.  “You can either hand over the price we must all pay willingly, or you can withhold the price and it will be withdrawn from your soul by force.”

Send a textAs soon as my eyes opened, confusion descended.  It was Easter morning 3 years ago. Where was I?  It took a good 3 seconds for my brain to start firing the horrors of the night before.  The realization that Kaden was in a morgue this morning slammed into my chest like a hammer on an anvil.  My heart was flattened beneath the two and drained of blood.  My mind twisted with pain as last night came flooding back, in all it’s horror.

Send a textSometimes life feels like we are in a boxing ring.  Sometimes it’s just downright a freaking dog fight. Hopefully, that’s not how it is all the time for us but sometimes, it definitely can feel this way.  I have found myself in the ring MANY times at this point, more than I can count and more than I’d like to admit to.  I think there are many of us that are in a ring and don’t even understand who our opponent is, what it is that we are even rumbling with.  For the majority of the time I spent in the ring of life, needing to fight my way onto sunnier paths, I have not known who or what my opponent really was.  I’m in a ring, shuffling back and forth, swinging at shadows and ghosts.  All my efforts doing nothing for me, because I can’t land a punch to anything other than air.  So much anger and frustration and exhaustion and grief.  Shadows and ghosts, shadows and ghosts. 

Send a textI’ve come to believe that we all wear masks, some are just thicker than others.  Some of us have figured out how to make our masks razor thin.  Some have huge, hefty, thick masks and their bodies/hearts/minds are bent under the weight of them.  Some live in the in between. 

Send a textI told my 13 year old I was doing 10 posts leading up to Kaden’s death date with all the most powerful lessons learned along the way.  I asked for her teenage wisdom, what she thought her most powerful lesson learned has been.  Without even thinking she said this: “You never know who is hurting, so freaking be nice”.  I decided to tackle that one tonight.  She is so right.

Send a textWe all have a fire inside of us.  For some the fire is just glowing embers and some have raging infernos.  I’ve had both and everything in between.   The fuel for our fires are different for everyone.  They can consist of logs of abandonment and abuse,  wood of highly conditional love and criticism, kindling of loss and trauma.  These things feed the fire and it grows.  If we aren’t tending to the the blaze it is likely to get out of control.  We must all become “tenders of our fire”

Send a textDay 8 of 10 day countdown writings of last year leading up to Kaden's death date anniversary.  "The lesson I’ve taken from these experiences is this: We all die before we really die.  Versions of us die.  We must evolve.  We must change.  We must pick up from ashes and create something new.  The reality is that when I visit the grave of my husband and son, side by side on a green hill above the city….I visit the grave of myself also."

Send a textDay 9 of the 10 Day Countdown to Kaden's Death Date Anniversary.  Today I talk about the Gift of Perspective.  

Send a textHi guys.  Today is going to be the first episode in a 10 day countdown I did last year, leading up to the anniversary of my son’s death.  PS - if you’ve lost someone, what do you call that date?  I’ve heard it called a couple of things like graduation, angelversary, death date... .  If you have a good one, leave it in the comments on socials, I’ll put a link in the show notes.  Anyway, that year it felt important to me for some reason to force myself to put some clarity around what the hell I’ve gotten out of this wild ride, with death riding shotgun.  So, every Sunday for the next 10 weeks, I’ll be releasing my crazy, rad, horrible,  lessons from last year’s endeavor. .  So, without further ado, this was my first post in the countdown.  

Send a textLoss is not just death, not by a long shot.  There are sooooo many things to grieve, so many things to lose, so many things we wanted, so many things we loved.  Get to work learning the skill of grieving because you will need it over and over throughout your life.  This can be learned!  Because we all have a helluva lot to Grieve, y'all.  You open up more room in your life to live the good stuff when the loss has somewhere to be laid down.