Through Gigi’s Eyes
The sky was filled with shades of pink, red, with flecks of blue. It looked like a rainbow.
My mom and I sat on a hill as the sun was setting…Jazz, my beloved chestnut pony, stood next to me. I was holding his reins when my mom shared the news.
“Gigi, Daddy passed away,” she said. I was surprised, because I thought after all this time away the doctors would have cured him and he would come home. I was wrong.
Blindsided by Change
That's the thing about the change that knocks the life out of you—it doesn't announce itself. It doesn't give you time to prepare, to say the things you need to say, to memorize someone's face one last time. It just happens. One minute you're a wife wondering when your husband will finish socializing and come home. The next minute you're in a hospital, and by that night, you're making the decision to take him off life support.
Parallel
Grief Kept Watch
One day shy of thirteen years since my first son was stillborn, I found myself in labor with another son. The date alone carried weight, though I tried to ignore my grief. Yet it kept watch quietly, the way it often had, always lingering.
The Audacity of Carrying On
Sometimes grief doesn’t feel like a temporary visitor.
It feels like it moved in.
Sometimes loudly.
Sometimes slowly seeping in.
It disrupts your routines and relationships.
It scatters itself in places you didn’t know could ache.
At first, it might feel survivable.
Manageable.
Something you believe—and hope with all your might—will soon leave.
But grief rarely arrives with an exit plan.
Black Lace is my Grief Power move
Black Lace is my Grief Power move, a poem at a time of deep grief Erin calls her“sacred pause.”
The Color of My Comeback
By then, purple had become something more than a color preference. It was a decision. A declaration. A way of saying: I am still here, and this life – however strange, unexpected, and reshaped – is still mine.
Purple became the color of my comeback.
The Wood Stove and the Wartime Nurse
So many times before this night, the wood stove had brought me a soft and melty peace. I would add a log and visualize a worry crackling and sometimes popping, depending on the juiciness of the worry, and then burning away to ash. And well, the wine may have helped, too.
When You Don’t Recognize Yourself Anymore
There’s a quiet moment that sneaks up on you in grief.
It isn’t the anniversaries.
It isn’t the holidays.
It isn’t the predictable ache of a date circled on the calendar.
It’s subtler than that.
It’s catching your reflection and thinking, Who is this?
It’s realizing you don’t react the way you used to.
That your tolerance has shifted.
That your energy feels different in your own body.