All the Heart Can Hold

All the Heart Can Hold

Holiday, Love Lives On, Motivational poster, Quote, Valentine, widow

Some thoughts on love and a little Valentine’s day heARTwork. Can you love more than one person at a time? Of course, you can. How do you hold the love for those who are not with you in this life? Do you speak their name? Share memories and stories of their life? Do you remember them in quiet moments of internal reflection that require no words at all? Do you see them in a look or hear them in the laugh of someone else you love? Love lives...
Moving Forward

Moving Forward

grief, Motivational poster, moving forward, Photograph by Ken Gehle, Photography, Quote

My husband died on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in 2010. Years like this I live through the day twice, once on the eighteenth and again on MLK day. This year was the fifth anniversary of his death. I wanted to write about it - to process all that I was feeling - for a week before and for days after. But the words wouldn’t come. I took a stroll through some of the images of our children that he has taken over the years. This one of our son flying through the air struck me and called to mind a quote I have referred to quote often. Sometimes I crawl but always I keep moving...
One Day: A Story of Integrating Loss

One Day: A Story of Integrating Loss

accepting new love, grief, Kairos, Motivational poster, moving forward, openness, Photograph by Tamara Beachum

I flipped through a magazine while my son sat in the barber’s chair getting a back-to-school trim. A photo of a woman standing on top of a mountain peak, arms outstretched, with her body backlit by the sun caught my eye. She was clearly experiencing a moment of kairos time. The first line told me this was also a story of loss. The subject of the article, Jen Lacey, had made the difficult decision to have her leg amputated after it failed to heal properly from an accident. Coming to the end of the piece I realized that, substituting a few words, I could have written the same. “It’s hard to be a [widow]; I won’t sugarcoat it. But every day, I get more used to my [new life], and sometimes I even forget it’s there. You might think I’d dread having strangers ask questions, but I don’t mind—some of them are in a situation like I was, [pre-widowhood], and I can offer advice. Lately I’ve been mentoring new [widows] and hosting [widow] support groups, and it’s allowed me to help people, which is what I’ve always loved to do… The best part: I wake up every day with hope…” I’m not saying I understand what it’s like to be an amputee – clearly I don’t – but this is the closest analogy I can think of to explain what life feels like as a widow.  A part of me was severed when Ken died. We spent our young adult lives in each other’s orbit and grew into maturity together. We became parents and experienced all of those firsts...
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