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Each One, Help One
“Don’t hoard your lessons!” Those words hammered into the back of my mind one day, about three months after my second wife died. By then, I’d been asked to share my grief journey. Contrary, or maybe not, to what one may think, it came pretty easy to talk about and was beneficial to me. I…
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Imposters Syndrome – Overcoming Self-Doubts
Robin Williams, Richard Nixon, Oprah Winfrey, Ernest Hemingway, Vincent Van Gogh, Marilyn Monroe, John Steinbeck, George Washington, John F Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, and many others struggled with their self-esteem and thought themselves imposters at some point during their lifetime. Why do so many successful people struggle emotionally and psychologically? Why do they often feel that…
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Grief. Guilt. The Unexpected Emotional Gut Punch Of A Life Insurance Cheque
by Richard Dri When the reality of life insurance sinks in. You and your spouse both knew that life insurance made perfect sense. Now as a widow or widower, why do you feel so guilty? I don’t think there’s a person reading this who doesn’t understand that life insurance is one of the most practical…
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Accepting Your Partner’s Faults
By Fred Colby “Mother Theresa” is what my daughters and many of her friends called my wife during her lifetime. This was initially inspired when she dressed up like Mother Theresa during a Halloween celebration at Wangenheim Middle School, where she worked part-time. She carried a donation jar labeled “Help Mother Theresa Go to the…
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Too Much Chaos
WSN-MO: Jeff Ziegler – Widowers, Wounded, Warrior, Waling and Walking Over the last two years, I have found that on numerous occasions, I have “bitten off a lot more than I can chew.” It has been challenging to take on some things I have chosen to do—mostly to distract myself from my grief, making it…
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Am I Cheating?
There is a feeling of fall in the air. Depending on where you live, you may have noticed the nights are feeling a little cooler, and the morning air is feeling a little brisker. Where I live, I have also seen the leaves on the trees are starting to lose their spring/summer green color. One…
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Permission to Change
My wife and I slept in a king-size bed in the final years of her life. After her death, I continued to sleep in that massive bed, but always on my side, not hers. It was a comfortable bed, but I found I was swimming all over it at night, and it was hard to…
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Forgiveness – what role does it play in my grief journey?
Guilt and anger are recognized characteristics of the grief journey – Guilt over what could have been done or should have been done; guilt over things left unsaid or things that were better left unsaid; guilt over those fleeting moments where a smile might form around the corners of your mouth; guilt for some unknown…
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Forgiveness
In the old movie, “Love Story,” the lead character says, “Being in love means never needing to say you’re sorry.” In fact, loving another person means often saying you’re sorry unless you are such a perfect person that you never blunder into a thoughtless talk or fail to show sympathy and support when you should.…
Widowers Support Network 