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

Deep winter thoughts

I’m not in a good place this morning. That business about letting go of resentment that I wrote about a few days ago seems to have come back to mock me. I have finally gotten around to watching a webcast of a seminar at National Institutes of Health last spring, ‘De Novo SPG4 Inaugural Symposium.’… Continue reading Deep winter thoughts

Childless

This is Presidents Day weekend, Sarah’s birthday weekend. We are planning to go out to dinner on Sunday with Sarah’s tutor, who we were all close to, but have vague “we’ll do something” plans for Monday. Perhaps I will get a pedicure with purple or pink polish. This morning I read a BBC News article… Continue reading Childless

Untitled

These last few days my usual emotional repertoire since August 18 of guilt, depression, angst, and constant tearfulness seems different. A couple of nights ago, I woke up from a dream screaming. I remember that someone was trying to steal the new car I bought in place of our wheelchair van, and leave me three… Continue reading Untitled

True Facts

Little kids, and sometimes adults too, used to come up to me and ask me “What’s wrong with her?” when I was out and about with Sarah. I don’t blame kids for having questions but there was never any good answer and I sucked at handling this situation. Sarah understood everything that was said around… Continue reading True Facts

Love

So I did end up buying a Valentine card for Sarah. It has a heart theme with multiple pages that you open with a silly question on each page like “Who is the girl that millions adore? Who is the one that makes my heart soar?” and so forth until you get to the middle… Continue reading Love

Taconic Parkway

It seems to be the symbol of all my guilt and grief at this point. Why? I was not at home when Sarah died. I had gone up to New York City on Tuesday afternoon August 16 to help my Dad, who is 90, tour an independent living facility in Albany. It was so rare… Continue reading Taconic Parkway

I Hope You’re Getting Good Support

This has to be among my least favorite things for people to say to me. There seems to be an implied “But not from me” at the end of it, as if the Venn Diagram of Support offers a large, vast interlocking network of caretakers and caregivers and groups and therapists and so forth keeping… Continue reading I Hope You’re Getting Good Support

Things I Never Wanted To Change

This morning when I got up as usual at a little before 4 a.m. and scanned three or four news websites, I came across an article in the New York Times stating that elite Supreme Court clerks (these are the young lawyers that assist the judges in writing decisions for a year or two, for… Continue reading Things I Never Wanted To Change

Signs

Since Sarah’s death I’ve done a lot of reading on grief and mourning and child loss and death, both “how to” manuals and memoirs written by parents of dead children. There’s a lot of stuff out there. I have read straightforward “What To Expect During The First Year” how-to’s, similar to when I was pregnant… Continue reading Signs