Although I lived in Chicago for many St. Patrick’s Days, there was only one year I actually saw the boats out dyeing the river green, and that was in 2003 as I walked to the court house with the first great love of my life, Karsten Soltauer, to get married. We paused for a while Read more about Everything gets into everything[…]
Five years ago today was the last day I got to spend with Karsten, although of course I didn’t know it at the time. People always think that if they could have a day back to spend with someone who’s gone, that they’d live it so differently. But most of the time there’s no heads-up Read more about Love on your people[…]
There’s a lot of mysticism about the number three and its special role in the universe. Some say it’s the strongest number, because the triangle is the most stable physical shape. That makes a strange sort of sense to me today. Today is, after all, the third anniversary of the day I woke up and found out Read more about Three Years[…]
A Vietnamese coworker of Karsten’s used to say: so much good, so much bad. I don’t know what today holds; I only know that the last few days were full of joy for me and brought loss to quite a few of my friends. But I also know this: the sun will be shining today, Read more about So much good, so much bad[…]
I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned it in this blog anywhere, but I’m currently writing two books. One of them is about marketing new ideas, and one is a memoir dealing with the deaths of my father and my husband. Writing two books at once might seem crazy, but it feels kind of natural, actually. Read more about The Link Between Gratitude and Hope[…]
My mind has always been mildly obsessed with numbers. Words, too, but in a different way. You know that scene in “A Beautiful Mind” when John Nash, played by Russell Crowe, is looking at the coded numbers on the wall and pulling patterns from them? Well, my mind is nothing like that. I mean it is, Read more about Dates and Numbers[…]
Tomorrow, June 25th, it will have been one year since Karsten died. I’ve gained a vast amount of insight about life in the last year. I learned that the initial year after you lose someone is sometimes called “the year of firsts,” because every experience, no matter how mundane, becomes significant when it’s the first Read more about Surviving the First Year[…]
I’ll tell you straight up: 2012 seemed as if it came at me like a psycho with an axe. I mean, intense personal loss is usually enough to color the character of an entire calendar year. Going through a nearly year-long period of physical pain would…
You might not know it by what I’ve written here in the last few months, but I swear I can be a whole lot of fun. I really do think about many topics besides death. I laugh far, far more often than I cry. And I smile most of the time. I just do. Bu…
Tomorrow it will have been four weeks since Karsten died. Wednesday will be one month. Dates have been whizzing by me while I try to get back to my life, to the extent that that’s been possible, and I find here and there I’ve lost track of how man…