The ghosts still find me. They don’t need directions.They know where I am. They find me in dreams,where the dead are inconveniently alive again,where I can hear a voiceI haven’t heard in yearsand for one glorious, cruel momentforget that I cannot hear it anymore. They find me in […]
Autumn is the cusp of darknesswhen the days grow shorterand the trees begin letting go. But it isn’t winter yet. Perhaps grief is like that. I have lost so many.Some far too young.Some who should still besending ridiculous emails,making me laugh,walking through the worldas if they had all […]
There are some losses that feel strangely personal, even when you never knew the person. Dolly Parton is one of those for me. My mom loved country music, and we listened to Dolly together all the time. She was funny, wildly gifted, unapologetically herself, said it like she […]
I’m still deleting emails. It hasn’t gotten old yet. This quiet excavation of a life lived in subject lines and timestamps. Somewhere between “no longer relevant” and “why did I save this,” I keep brushing up against memory. Not the dramatic kind. The soft, ambient kind that hums […]
So apparently, we’ve decided death needed a software update. Enter the “grief bot.” An AI-powered, eerily chipper digital version of your dead loved one which is ready to text you back, remember your birthday, and maybe even say the things they never quite managed to say while alive. […]
There should really be a punch card for grief by now. Ten losses and you get a free latte, a brief reprieve, a coupon for “emotional stability, one day only.” I would have redeemed mine several lifetimes ago. I have lost in all the traditional ways. The kinds […]
Lately the news has felt like a slow drumbeat of mortality. You see familiar faces. People you grew up watching, people who seemed woven into the background of your life and suddenly their names are trending next to words like illness, cancer, ALS, loss. You see names like […]
OK. Here’s my thing today.This is not my lane.This was my spouse’s lane.Three years ago, if you had asked me about extraterrestrials, I would have handed the microphone to EsoterX and gone back to writing about trauma, attachment, and why people overshare in elevators. But lately? The universe […]
I live in a housefull of heartbeat and voices,laughter ricocheting off walls,footsteps tapping rhythms up and down stairs. And yetthere are nightswhen the noise dissolvesand I am alonein a room packed with people. It’s strange, right?To feel invisiblewhile standing center stagein your own life. Pain has a way […]
January has always felt like a strange month. It’s long, gray, and stretched thin like an old rubber band about to snap. People talk about “new beginnings,” resolutions, fresh starts. But for some of us, January is not a clean slate. It’s a ledger of losses. I’ve lost […]
