Displaying items by tag: transformation

The first time I noticed it was in second grade. I was laying in my childhood bed, staring at the shapes that looked like faces on the wooden wall next to me, sobbing. I missed my best friend and couldn’t wait to see her again at school on Monday.

It was Saturday morning and she had just left minutes ago from a Friday night sleepover at my house. The night before we ate pizza and watched Disney movies in the basement, then we played with my collection of My Little Ponies, which I had meticulously spaced out in rows and columns by color on the basement floor. If we slept at all, it was in sleeping bags in front of the fireplace. Mostly we stayed up, giggling and laughing, me not wanting the night to end because of the emotions that would come for me when she left. 

As a child, I couldn’t begin to understand why I felt immense sadness after my friend left on Saturday. I just knew that I missed her and missed what I thought was the best night of my life. 

I started this website to focus on loss and the complicated relationship it has with grief, depression, and loneliness. The rollercoaster of emotions that naturally comes along with losing a loved one or something in your life that you cared deeply about sends you to parts of yourself that you would rather forget existed. The grief inevitably brings out feelings that once lay dormant and then hijacks every part of your body, brain, and heart.

I have also written about how I have learned to use new-found tools and support from others to overcome the challenges and paralyzing effects grief creates. From podcasts I have listened to, to books I have read, to supportive friends, family, colleagues and healing retreats, I spent the better part of two years trying to figure out how to heal.

“I think everyone should attend a grief retreat at least once in their lives,” I told my friend asking me how the experience of attending a loss and transformation retreat was. “It should be required for navigating tough times.”

As humans, grief is an inevitable part of life. When we open ourselves up to love, we risk losing it. In October of 2022, I went on a life-changing trip to Bolinas, CA to a house of hope and healing called Commonweal. There, I delved deeper into the grief over my mother’s death and my marriage’s failure. During the course of six days, I met wonderful women from all over the country, from all walks of life, and who were experiencing their own personal loss and seeking the same things as me: to feel loved, to be heard, to squelch the loneliness, and to heal.