balloons

Holidays

We are coming up on the double whammy of Valentine’s Day and Sarah’s birthday on February 20th. Preparing for and getting through both of these holidays was always a little difficult, and it still feels hard. Sarah loved them both. I would help her choose a valentine theme and either buy boxed valentines or make homemade valentines… Continue reading Holidays

Holidays

Last night I dreamed that I was teaching a small class of middle schoolers or high schoolers some sort of elective. I hadn’t really prepared a curriculum and was sort of BS-ing my way through the lesson, which consisted of walking around our neighborhood park and pointing out various conifers and their rate of growth.… Continue reading Holidays

Maladaptive Behavior

This morning Google News sent me a Psychology Today article letting me know that there are 3 Ways My Personality Might Be Secretly Harming Me. (Only 3?) It seems, according to Mark Travers, Ph.D., that we all need to “check in” with ourselves regularly to avoid slipping into maladaptive behavioral patterns, although Mark does not… Continue reading Maladaptive Behavior

Tomorrow is Valentines’ Day, which was one of Sarah’s very favorite holidays. It’s hard to say that there was a holiday she did not like celebrating: birthdays most of all (her own, ours, her friends’), V-Day, Hanukkah, Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Fathers and Mothers Days, and any other holiday for which the grocery stores produced balloons… Continue reading Balloons

Valhoma

There’s no word in our culture to describe the unique status of a parent who has lost a child to early death, the way we would say ‘widow’ or widower about a bereaved spouse, or orphan about a child with dead parents. A few months ago as I was cruising the Death and Grief Internet,… Continue reading Valhoma