Thirty years of marriage, and grief still turns the calendar into a battlefield. September 7th would’ve been our 30th anniversary, and I’m celebrating it—because we honored our vows, built something permanent, and loved each other fiercely. The plans we never reached still echo, but the love remains. Even now, Greg’s steady heart is stitched into every corner of my life.

Grief changed the way I socialize, connect, and even pack a suitcase. In this journal piece, I talk about how losing Greg rewrote my ENTJ wiring, drained my social energy, and made the world feel unpredictable. If you’re navigating grief, social exhaustion, or identity shifts, this piece offers a raw, relatable look at how loss reshapes us from the inside out.

And then one day, the fog thins for a second, and you realize you can actually see your own life again without having to wipe your glasses every five seconds like you’re prepping for surgery.

We brace ourselves for the big things, but it’s the smallest items that carry the most weight. A toothbrush. A phone. A shirt that still smells like them. Grief hides in the ordinary.

After the fireworks fade, grief still burns quietly. Nine months after losing my husband, I’m learning to live in the aftermath — where independence meets widowhood, healing follows heartbreak, and the July 4th sky reminds me that love and loss can coexist beneath the same light.

We count the days because each one feels like a tiny act of preservation. A way of saying, ‘I still remember the weight of him. I still remember the warmth. I still remember the way he touched me like it was the most natural thing in the world.’ Counting becomes a way of holding on to the physicality of love—the parts that can’t be photographed or written down or retold.

“Because mother hunger doesn’t disappear with age—it just changes shape.” Parenting through grief has rearranged our entire safety map, and I’m learning how to be the anchor even when I feel like I’m rebuilding myself from the inside out.

Nobody warned me that losing my person would turn grocery‑store music into an emotional minefield. From “Take My Breath Away” ambushes to sacred songs I refuse to skip, this is my story of grief, ’80s anthems, and choosing what I listen to with care—because music can shift our mood faster than Aqua‑Net held up my hair.

Some battles are chosen, others are inherited — and grief leaves us holding the pieces, trying to make sense of a story we never had full control over.

When Facebook nuked my profiles, it felt like a second, crushing loss. It wasn't just about the network; it was the realization that they had detached me from the memories I shared with Greg. It was a digital erasure of our time together. We’ve already lost so much in this journey, and having those digital artifacts—those snapshots of a life we once lived together—suddenly ripped away adds a layer of grief that is hard to explain to anyone who hasn't felt that specific kind o

For my entire life, I had dismissed theater. But in that seat, with the snow falling outside, I understood the true power of this art form. Theater isn’t about wearing a mask; it's about seeing the universal human heart—its love, its grief, its beautiful, messy truth—perfectly articulated, even when you have no words of your own.

You don’t realize how much room you have to fly until the person holding your safety net is gone. Operating in zero gravity is exhausting. It means being Maverick and Iceman, the visionary and the pragmatist, the free spirit and the strict schedule-keeper, all at the exact same time.

I fully expected to bring him home from St. Vincent’s. After all, he had survived a small heart attack on our wedding anniversary in September of 2018, and I believed this would be another hurdle we’d clear together. But twelve days later, on October 3, 2025, I lost my soulmate, the love of my life, and my steady ground. I was 51 years old, and Greg was only 55.