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Dogs and Love
In the year after our twin daughters were born, we got a golden retriever puppy we named Charlie. Everyone always says they have “the best dog ever,” but in my opinion, Charlie indeed was. When the girls were young, they could pull on his ears, his tail, his fur, just about any part of him,…
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Dear Abby Style Article #1
PUBLISEHD 3-19-20 WSN-MO: The Perfect Catch A few minutes with Dating and Relationship Coach, Christine Baumgartner Just about every day, I’m in communication with widowers. Not only is it what I do as a dating and relationship coach, it also comes from being involved in several widow Facebook groups. I’m so grateful for all these…
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Helping Your Children
An Excerpt from The Widower’s Journey (Taken from Chapter 10) As I said at the beginning of this chapter, grief means we’ve been cut off from a relationship that brought us all kinds of emotional benefits. Part of our recovery is finding sources of emotional support that will help assuage the sting of that loss.…
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Christmas
Holidays are an especially hard time for those who are grieving, and Christmas may be the hardest for those who especially love it. My wife died on October 25, 2010, so Christmas came two months after her death. My three adult children were coming for the holiday with the four young grandchildren we had then,…
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Dealing with the feelings that come up around the holidays
All those feelings that come up around the holidays As the holidays approach, I start hearing from folks in my widowhood community. They talk about the variety of feelings the season is bringing up for them. A widower, with sadness and confusion in his voice, tells me that the holidays were always “her thing”. She…
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Living In-Between?
Many of us have a natural inclination to do the things that we feel we do well. I, in many ways, have found aspects of widowhood very much like that. Last week I experienced what would have been my 19th wedding anniversary and the celebration of 25 years together with my late wife. Periodically I…
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Fun Activities to DO with Your Grandchildren
Grieving and Thanksgiving 2018 With the approach of Thanksgiving, I can’t help but think back to Thanksgiving 2012, my very first holiday following my husband’s sudden death. The grief fog was still very thick. Numbness created a comforting cushion around my body and emotions. My husband had died in August. By the time November arrived,…
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Widower 101: More Key Learnings
Recently I shared four things that I have learned since becoming a widower. In this article, I would like to continue to share a few additional thoughts on this issue. For each one of us, this list may be different. As I write in my book The First 365, a loss is the ultimate designer…
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What are you going to be doing on New Year’s Eve?
WSN-MO: The Perfect Catch WSN-MO Dating and Relationship Coach, Christine Baumgartner asks… What are you going to be doing on New Year’s Eve? I’ve been talking about the holiday season and widowhood for the past couple weeks. In those articles, I haven’t included the New Year’s celebration because it often impacts people differently than the…
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An Excerpt from The Widower’s Journey: Appendix III – Support From Pets
When considering what actions widowed men can take in hopes of accelerating their healing, they may only have to reach down to the pet seated beside them. I witnessed the power of pets often during Michelle’s illness, especially during the final hours of her life when her son Jacques carried each of Michelle’s three golden…
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