I did a big thing yesterday. Well, to you it may seem small but, for me, being 127 days into my grieving process, it was monumental. I changed my sheets. The same sheets that we spent our last night together in. The sheets that we would lay in bed cuddling…

“Anger always comes from frustrated expectation” ~ Elliott Larson I held onto my anger like an impenetrable shield. It motivated me. Held me. Protected me. It became my coping mechanism. My fire, my way to hide. It made me friends. And enemies. The more my anger grew, the more it became ingrained into my inner fabric. Sometimes it would…

A poem for the grief peepers, leeches, and attention seekers. Grief is disorienting. It’s like a 3am barroom brawl after someone slipped a Xanax in your drink. Small snippets of memories crocheted together by the design of my brain to enter into self-protection mode. Blackouts. Nothingness. Feeling numb and overstimulated…

I started drinking when I was 13. Now, I know most kids start to experiment in their early teen years but for me, it became an outlet for me to deal with dysfunction at home. You see for me, growing up in a morbidly abusive household, the typical teenage awkwardness…

Dear body, I am sorry for all the mean things I said to you over the years. I am sorry for the projections from other people that made me think you were anything but perfect. I am sorry for internalizing emotional abuse and hate from people who didn’t deserve to touch you…

What they don’t tell you about grief. When we talk about the grieving process, the most standard response is that someone goes through the seven stages of grief which are: shock and denial, guilt, anger and bargaining, depression, the upward turn, reconstruction, and acceptance. I call bullsh*t on this antiquated linear framework of something that hits so…

I was widowed 40 days ago. My fiancé went to work on a Thursday morning, and less than two hours later, he was killed by an idiot who pulled out in front of him. Since that fateful Thursday, it seems as though everyone around me has been pushing me to move out of the home we…

And how I gave up meat for good — Growing up I never once ate a vegetable. Granted, my mother couldn’t cook so my introduction to vegetables consisted of a frozen block of welfare rations thrown into a boiling pot of water. I was repulsed by the rubbery texture and lack of seasonings to counteract the freezer burn so…

I unexpectedly lost my life partner 15 days ago. His name was Jeff Begreen and he was only 35 years old, and my god, was he my world. He had recently taken a job driving a dump truck so we could buy a homestead in the Southwest. On that Thursday morning, Jeff had just picked up a 20-ton load…