You look down. You blink. You look down again. Those are your feet, yes. You recognize the bunion from 1987 and the hammer toe from that unfortunate clog phase. But why do they look like they belong to someone twenty pounds heavier? Welcome to heat edema. It sounds like a medical condition from a Victorian novel, […]

You’ve been productive. Good for you! Maybe you watered the garden. Maybe you took a gentle walk around the block. Maybe you decided that today was the day to scrub the front porch steps because that moss was starting to look like a shag carpet. You come inside, feeling proud. You sit down in your […]

Let’s talk about a very rude trick the human body plays during the Dog Days. You’re sitting outside, enjoying a gentle breeze, maybe watching a squirrel steal birdseed. You’ve been out there for a while, feeling fine. Then you stand up to go inside for that glass of iced tea you’ve been dreaming about. And […]

Well, here we are. The calendar has flipped past the Fourth of July, the hummingbirds are drinking like they just ran a marathon, and your favorite rocking chair on the porch has turned into a griddle. That’s right, friends. It’s the Dog Days of Summer. Now, before you go looking for Duke or George lounging […]

Did ;you know that there is a new day of awareness and action in the United States, dedicated to women’s retirement security. Women’s retirement journeys are rarely identical. Women face unique retirement challenges, including lower lifetime earnings, caregiving interruptions, longer life expectancy, limited access to workplace retirement plans, and competing financial priorities. No one gets […]

There is a particular kind of silence that falls over a life when it arrives at a fork in the road. It is not the quiet of peace, but the hush of a held breath. You stand at the junction of two paths leading in opposite directions: to tell or not to tell, to leap […]

  For Shar, a daughter who passed too soon We will dance and sing till sundown and feast with abandon We’ll sleep when the morning comes Ane we’ll rise to the sound of the bird songs We’ll be here when e world slows down and the sunbeams fade away Keeping time with a pendulum, As […]

Here is the final thing that helps: Give yourself permission to feel good again. So many grieving partners carry a secret guilt. How dare I laugh? How dare I enjoy a meal? How dare I take a trip without them? But here is the truth the long-married eventually learn: Loving someone does not end when they die. […]

When you are grieving, some people will disappear. They don’t mean to be cruel. They just don’t know what to do. Let them go. And then watch for the ones who show up differently. The neighbour who leaves soup on your porch without ringing the bell. The friend who calls and says, “I’m going for […]

One of the hardest questions after losing a partner is not “What happened?” It is “Who am I now?” For decades, your identity was wrapped up in “we.” We go to the market. We visit the grandkids. We argue about the thermostat. Then suddenly it is just “I.” And “I” feels like a stranger. What […]