03/08/2026
Today would have been my thirteenth wedding anniversary.
It isn’t. And this morning, like most mornings, I’ve sat in the quiet with my coffee, my dog’s feet tap tap tapping behind me. I get to watch the shadows dance through the sunlight in the garden. I get to hear the birds chirping, chattering, singing, and see them swooping through the air in front of me. I get that every single morning without fail, and it’s beautiful.
I hold so much gratitude that this is how I start my day. Because of my bereavements, I am aware, I feel into the importance, the fragility and the gratitude of my life, so much more than I did before. And at the same time, I’m starting my day missing my husband, wishing he was here to celebrate thirteen years of marriage. Wishing he was here to see his boy. The reality of my life is duality, a duality of holding sadness and wishes for a different reality, alongside compassion, joy, and gratitude for everything I have.
I get to hold this space for myself. Once upon a time I didn’t have the capacity to be able to live in that duality. I just had the pain, numbness and the sadness. Now I get to have it all, the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. But I get the highest of highs because I let myself feel the lowest of lows. When life was numb, I got to feel sometimes nothing, sometimes just the pain. And now, because I have held space for my grief and my pain, I also get to hold space for people who also have to be brave every single day, people who are going through what I have been through, of being exhausted and holding it all together, and still trying to make life good for themselves and for the people around them. I get to hold space for people who want to learn and grow, even in the middle of everything falling apart.
And again, the duality comes in, because I also get to live in a world where my husband, my dad, my father-in-law, and my brother no longer walk this earth with me. But the beauty of my work, unfortunately, comes because of my experience with death and loss and pain and grief.
Some days can still be really hard. And some days have become really amazingly good. Again, that’s the duality of it. It’s exactly where we get to feel huge amounts of joy, because we have also felt the depths of despair. The highest of highs exist because the lowest of lows do too. If I’d stayed numb to my feelings, I wouldn’t get to feel any of it.
My heart is broken, and I feel so much love and gratitude, at the same time. I live in a world full of loss, and full of so much creation.
The happiest day of my life, marrying my husband, also holds so much sadness since his death. And this year, it is also filled with more gratitude and joy, because it’s also the day I’ve opened my Anchor Within membership. A space to support people learning to live with grief the way I’ve been doing, consciously, for twelve years now. It holds so much creation in it. So much love. So much grounding. That it felt right, somehow, that it landed on this day.
I am grateful to be in this space today, to have all the feelings in one day. Obviously I would like things to be different, but they aren’t. And sometimes the fear still comes in, being a solo parent has its own challenges where fear definitely comes in. But in terms of my grief, of how I try to face each day, I try to choose faith in myself and self trust. Because without that, there is nothing. And so by following my faith and trust in myself, and a lot of determination! I have created something that brings me joy, and hopefully it will bring joy to other people who move through this membership alongside me, as we work gently together toward that long-term thriving, toward fully living in our own lives again, with the joy allowed back in.
I want to live in that world. Not the numb one. Not the one where I pretend I’m fine while I’m breaking inside. Not the one where I shut out the pain, because shutting out the pain means shutting out the joy too.
I’m in it now. And I know I want to be in the world where sometimes I cry so hard I can barely breathe, because in that same world, I also get to laugh so hard my belly wobbles and my face hurts. For so long, I didn’t know this space of duality even existed. I thought it would just be pain, forever, and I didn’t want to live like that. But I had to.
And now, now I know I can live in this space. Both things, always, at once. And that’s not something to survive. That’s something to live in.
Happy anniversary, my love. I remember the happiest day of my life, marrying my best friend, my soulmate. I was so lucky to find my person. And as the tears roll down my face missing you, I get to look around at a life I am so, so grateful for, and one I have made sure you are still very much present in.