Category: Grief
Posts on grief in its many forms — the acute losses, the slow ones, the ones nobody else notices. What it asks of us, what it takes from us, what it eventually leaves behind. Lived experience, not a roadmap.
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The Grief We Grow Old Enough to Understand
I didn’t understand the old woman’s words of wisdom then. They were something it took 50 years to grow into.
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Still Walking, Thank You Very Much
A red hiking pole from the Camino de Santiago became my mother’s, then mine — and an unexpected conversation with a 90-year-old neighbor about why we refuse the cane.
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Travel for Solar Return: The Three Months Prior
Three months before my Solar Return, grief arrived — and what followed wasn’t chaos but restructuring. Pluto–Saturn territory: estate planning, financial documents, disciplined output. Part 5 of an ongoing experiment in relocation astrology.
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Don’t Mandate the Merry in Merry Christmas
I’ve mentioned this every year for the last 19 years, for a reason: keep in mind that not everyone is feeling merry this season, for a multitude of reasons. You don’t know what a stranger is struggling with. Or even a friend. It can certainly be financial, health, relationship problems… but the last 6 weeks…
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How Research Saved Me from the Fate of Ophelia
Research has saved me from the fate of Ophelia, but maybe not in the way you might expect. I have mixed feelings about Taylor Swift’s new song, “The Fate of Ophelia,” even as I find myself unable to stop singing it. I’ve been intrigued by Hamlet’s Ophelia for over 40 years because to me, she…
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The Grief Book Returns, Expanded
I’m going back through my older non-fiction (and fiction) books that have been off the market for eons, making some minor updates and expansions, including cover changes and reformatting, and getting them back out there. This one was written for writers and creatives trying to work while grieving, but is useful to anyone carrying loss.…
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Southern Cemetery Etiquette
There’s an etiquette in Southern cemeteries — and in returning to the town where Mama is buried. A meditative essay on grief, memory, and the quiet rituals that hold us together long after loss.
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Me, Too: The Day my Parents Killed the Pedophile
With the #metoo campaign to shed a light on sexual harassment and sexual attack, a lot of survivors are telling their stories. I know it grieves my elderly mom that I talk about it and she wishes she could have done more, but she was victim in a different way…that’s another story. I’ve been telling…
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Let Pain Be Your Guide: Suicidal Thoughts as the Catalyst for Change
In honor of National Suicide Prevention Day, I’m reposting an article I published on this blog on 23 July 2008. I’ve made no changes to the original article, and rather than posting a new photo of my own with pretty writing on it, I’ve elected to keep the original picture I used 5 years ago…
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Speak of the Dead
When a loved one dies, we are often crushed by the realization that life goes on without them. It’s no different when someone is “dead” to us, whatever the reason may be. It’s just not as obvious because we assume they still live on elsewhere, not just in our memory. We tend to remember the…
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Blasted from the Past
Copyrighted by Lorna Tedder. Originally published in Passion to the Third Degree. My asthma is getting better but I’m zonked. I’m in one of those moods where I don’t want to sleep and don’t want to be awake either. But the water heater repairman’s come and gone, and I’ve been quietly productive, editing a book…
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Why I Really Don’t Miss Daddy So Much
Copyrighted by Lorna Tedder. Originally published in Third Degree Rising. It’s weird how I sometimes forget that Daddy’s dead. I don’t miss him. I really don’t. Some people, judgmental ones who don’t really know the situation and some who do but are judgmental stone-throwing bitches anyway, would probably say not missing him makes me a…
