From the heart...

This week I had a breakthrough - I've been seeking my authentic writing voice this summer and went back to my journal entries - and WOW - my voice jumped out. Read through all of my journal entries - cried a lot but I expected reading these would have this effect. I decided that the essence of Dubious Grief, as a writing project, lies in these journal entries. With that in mind I decided to use these as the heart of my book. Yea - I feel like this is a breakthrough in my writing.

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A year of blogging

My first post on Dubious Grief was a year ago. I started blogging because I wanted to put my writing out - I wanted a public place to put my writing. Writing a weekly post on the blog was a challenge - but it helped me let go of my ego and simply write. It has helped me let the words speak for themselves. Writing about grief, my grief, has freed me to write, from my heart. Creative nonfiction is a wonderful place to begin writing from.

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Healing is allowing release...

This past week my son Mike had a second surgery to remove cancerous limps. This morning, nearly a week after his surgery, I was finally able to let go of my fear of being left behind, yet again, by someone I love. A wave of grief flowed over me and tears followed. Not painful, heart wrenching tears like when the wave crushes me, but tears of relief, as I rode the wave through my grief, effortlessly releasing all of that grief held so tightly by me over the past month since the initial diagnosis. It's comforting to know I have learned the way to ride the wave...

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Finality of death...

My sister sent me a piece I wrote in 2007 reflecting on the death of my mother's husband. I started thinking about relationships from the past, the finality of death, and how once death comes, we can 't go back and "fix" those relationships. I'm reading - Death's Door - written by the literary critic Sandra Gilbert. One of the things she suggests about acknowledging the irreversibility of death is that we move away from the dreamlike past of thinking we might change the ending. Acknowledging the finality of the death is necessary before we can move forward with living.

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