Category Archives: life skills

life skills

Holding Space for Loneliness

I’ve worked hard over the last few years to build my listening skills. One of the key aspects of being a good listener is simply shutting up, and then once I learned how to do that, I had to learn how to stop using the time I wasn’t talking to formulate what I would say when I next spoke. It has taken a lot of discipline and patience with myself to just relax into listening when someone one else is talking.

I recently experienced a tough challenge to my ability to listen when a good friend of mine confessed to feeling lonely. I was surprised because they are someone I have identified as “a social butterfly,” regularly going to events with different people and maintaining many longtime friendships. I have even been a bit envious of this person’s social life in the past.

As I heard them talk about feeling like they don’t have anyone to confide in and they feel alone often, I had the urge to argue with them. They said they felt like they had no real friends and no one wanted to spend time with them. My mind immediately began assembling evidence to contradict their statements about being friendless.

I know from my own experience that being surrounded by others does not mean you aren’t lonely. In fact, the times I’ve felt the loneliest have been times I was with other people. I felt lonely when I was in grad school and it seemed everyone else was going to parties I wasn’t invited to; and when I was in college, I did get invited to a lot of parties but often felt lonely at them. So the proof my mind was gathering to invalidate my friend’s loneliness was irrelevant.

On top of that, arguing with someone when they are being vulnerable is never helpful. Telling a person who feels lonely that they are wrong to feel that way will make them feel more alone. Loneliness is about disconnection and being argued with disconnects us. I know this—but it took everything in me to sit quietly while my friend spoke and not point out what I perceived as the logical flaws in their thinking.

I struggled and floundered. A few times I noticed that when I was asking what I meant to be clarifying questions, the tone in my voice revealed that I wanted to be arguing. My voice took on the timbre of a prosecuting attorney—“Are you saying you have no one to talk to?” I wish I had said, “It sounds like you feel you have no one to talk to,” simply echoing back what they were saying to show understanding.

I had to keep reminding myself that my job wasn’t to show them that they aren’t actually alone but to listen and connect.

I’ve talked before about holding space. It means listening and offering support without judgment, without trying to fix the problem or situation. When we immediately go into fix-it mode, like I wanted to do, we invalidate the feelings of the speaker. In the case of loneliness, that would mean making them feel even lonelier.

This incident was a good reminder to me that holding space can be hard. It’s a skill that doesn’t come naturally to many people, and our society values problem-solvers, so even folks with good space-holding skills may not always think to use them.

Holding space for loneliness can help folks who are lonely feel more comfortable talking about it. When we immediately start trying to fix their loneliness, we shut down that conversation. In the case of my urge to argue with my lonely friend, arguing would certainly have had the opposite effect of connection. When someone feels lonely, proving them wrong is simply not helpful.

In trying to understand why I had such a hard time holding space for my lonely friend, I realized it’s because I often feel powerless around others’ loneliness. Because of my own experience being lonely, I know that simply being with someone else isn’t enough—although it’s a good start. Holding space means being with someone in a particular way: being open, not judging, and being present with vulnerability.

Note about loneliness: I talked about loneliness in my last newsletter. I mentioned Vivek Murthy’s assertion in Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World, that most of us feel lonely at some point but we tend to think we are the only person to ever feel alone.

grieving, life skills

Life Is Too Short to Be Busy

My husband was 61 years old when he died. He never got to retire. He didn’t get to see his son get married. He didn’t get to see me become a writer or our trainwreck dog become a responsible canine citizen. He missed out on so much.

Up until he had his stroke when he was 60, I was certain he would outlive me. He was almost 10 years older, but he was fit and vibrant and had an indominable spirit. I think the same could be said about me, but whenever we competed against each other, he won, so I just figured he would win the long life contest.

Given that I had a stroke myself and almost died when I was 27, I’ve been keenly aware of how short life is for a long time, but every time a young(ish) person I know dies suddenly, it knocks the wind out of me. I had the wind knocked out of me this week when a colleague unexpectedly died.

Some people ask, What would you do if you knew you only had a year left to live? I hate this question. None of us know when we’ll die. You may not even get that year. I prefer to keep in mind that each day could be my last and not wait for a grim diagnosis to kick me in the ass.

It’s easy to lose sight of what really matters in the midst of productivity culture, which valorizes answering email quickly or multitasking or hustling all the time. I’ve never heard of someone on their deathbed saying they wish they had gotten to Inbox Zero. No, the things dying people regret are not spending enough quality time with loved ones, holding themselves to others’ expectations rather than their own, and putting too much energy into work.

For me, living each day as if it could be my last means a few things on a daily basis:

  1. Never being too busy to respond to a bid for connection. This means the laundry may not get done or the email may not get answered, but the friend or colleague who wants attention or affection will get it. This doesn’t mean I entertain every interruption—I’m actually very good at shooing people away when they are just bored or looking to vent pointlessly. But when I discern an authentic bid for connection, I drop everything.
  2. Being accountable when I screw up. My late husband and I grew up learning that an apology is a sign of weakness, which means we had some unnecessarily ugly arguments. In my husband’s last year, we both learned to forgive, and it was a gift to both of us. Once we learned how to forgive, we were eager to do it and forgave each other all the time—we began competing to take responsibility for something rather than to blame the other. It was magical and I continue to apologize easily.
  3. Doing nothing regularly. Productivity culture makes us think we need to always be doing something, that being busy is intrinsically a good thing. But this is a myth. I have a wonderful friend who taught me the value of staring into space, preferably from a hammock. What could be more important than luxuriating in the pleasure of simply being alive? For more inspiration, I recommend Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing. For something shorter, try my first favorite poem, James Wright’s “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota.”
  4. Seeing time for what it is. People often say that time is money, but I think it makes more sense to realize that time is life. You only get a finite amount of it, and unlike with money, you have no way of knowing what your balance is. You can’t get a loan and there are no refunds.
  5. Seeing money for what it is. I recently read Die with Zero by Bill Perkins, which freed me up to stop worrying about saving every penny for retirement and thinking instead about using my money for experiences and creating memories with loved ones. Instead of planning to leave a large gift to organizations that matter to me when I die, I give them money now.

Email will not keep me from seizing the day!

academic life/work, failure, grieving, life skills

Embracing Mediocrity

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I usually aim to do the best I can but that does not mean I aim to be the best. Often the best I can do is mediocre, perhaps a C or C+, if anyone is grading. I am a good enough employee, a good enough researcher, a good enough neighbor, a good enough mother. I have a few moments or days here and there where I’m a really great mother or a fantastic professor, but that is not the norm for me.

I don’t say this to denigrate myself or fish for compliments. I’m not looking for anyone to argue with me and tell me no, I’m a fantastic mother and a kickass professor! I’m totally comfortable with my level of performance in these areas. I’m a good enough mother that my children trust me with matters I want to be trusted with. I’m a good enough professor that I don’t worry about students not learning what they need to learn.

One of the lessons grief has taught me is that being good enough is good enough. That sounds simple, but I spent a large chunk of my life aiming to be the best and feeling inadequate. As a recovering perfectionist, when I first started being serious about mediocrity, I wanted to be the best at mediocrity, to hit it hard. I’ve chilled out a lot over the years and learned that the real power of embracing mediocrity is in letting go of standards.

Once I shifted my goal to being good enough, I started feeling much better about myself. The really interesting thing is that my performance didn’t actually change. What changed was where I put my effort. When I stopped worrying about being the best professor, I had more energy left for my family, which made me a better mother and wife. When I stopped worrying about being the best wife ever, I had more energy left for myself, which made me a better wife.

About ten years ago, I started selecting at the beginning of each semester one category of my job to prioritize and allowing myself to be mediocre in the other categories. Some semesters I prioritized teaching, the writing center, service, or scholarship, and then the next semester I would prioritize a different category. Not once did anyone seem to notice that I was performing in a mediocre fashion. The semester I won a service award was a semester that I was not prioritizing service. Several times I’ve been nominated for a mentoring award, and frankly, I have never aimed to be anything but mediocre as a mentor.

When my husband had his stroke, I allowed myself to be mediocre at everything except taking care of him. Again, nobody seemed to notice. People did notice that I was doing less than I used to—serving on fewer committees, for example. But the quality of my work was good enough that nobody commented. My student evaluations remained consistent.

After my husband died, I stopped even aiming for mediocrity. People gave me grace. I gave myself grace. There was a year or so of teaching I don’t remember, but again, my student evaluations remained consistent. I recently heard from a student I had during that time who mentioned, unprompted by me, how he had applied some of what he’d learned in my class since then, and holy moly, he learned exactly what I wanted him to. Despite my exceedingly mediocre performance. Despite the fact that I don’t remember teaching him what he learned.

I have fully embraced mediocrity in most areas of my life now. I still get nominated for awards and occasionally win them. I don’t get nominated as often as I used to, but I don’t do anything I do for the recognition.

What I’ve learned is that allowing myself to be mediocre doesn’t mean I am mediocre. It just means I take the pressure off myself. Many writers know Anne Lamott’s advice to start with a shitty first draft. Removing the pressure to write something wonderful helps many writers get past writer’s block and actually produce something decent.

One of my favorite writing teachers, Diana Goetsch, says that writers should allow themselves to write something that might suck—but it also might smack of genius (she’s quoting someone with the “smack of genius” phrase but I can’t remember who).

By embracing mediocrity, I’ve taken a “shitty first draft” approach to nearly everything I do. I’m astonished at how often what I do ends up sort of smacking of genius. And often it doesn’t smack of genius, and that’s ok because my job in life isn’t to be a genius—it’s to be a good enough human. By just aiming to do the best I can and not to be The Best, I have more time and energy left for what matters.

grieving, life skills

Changing My Relationship with My House

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One of the many worries I had when my husband died was how to take care of the house. I’ve had the house for 23 years and have managed to have very little to do with the upkeep and maintenance beyond cleaning and decorating.  I managed to learn almost no home maintenance skills. I did help with the basement remodel and kitchen remodel, but my skills fell mostly in the demolition arena. I can smash things up and haul those smashed things out, but there’s almost nothing else useful I could do.

Even after my husband had his stroke, he could answer questions for me or tell me who to call. When the sprinkler system had a problem, he told me exactly where to look for the issue. I took pictures of what I saw, showed him the pictures, and he told me what to do.

When the security system had a glitch, again, he talked me through figuring out the issue and calling someone to fix it.

After my husband’s stroke, I read Abigail Thomas’s memoir, A Three Dog Life, about living alone after her husband has an accident that makes it impossible for her to care for him. At the time, I was optimistic that my husband had many years ahead of him, and I shuddered thinking of Thomas taking care of her house alone.

A large part of my first few nights as a widow involved sitting in the house in fear of something going wrong. I didn’t know who I would call, what I would do, how I would afford whatever needed to be done. Although I loved the house because it reflected Tom’s sensibility and made me feel close to him—so many of the decorating choices had been made by him, he had a hand in choosing almost all the artwork, and we had remodeled the basement together—I was also afraid of it.

 Soon after he died, something went wrong with the macerator in the basement. As soon as I realized the problem was with the macerator, I remembered Tom saying, “As long as nothing ever goes wrong with the macerator, we’ll be ok.” It was nearly 24 hours before anyone could come out to look at it, partly because it took me a while to figure out who to call and how to explain what had happened. Finally, a plumber came out and assured me it was actually an easy fix.

In the 2 ½ years that Tom’s been gone, I’ve learned a few skills. Just a few. One of the most important skills is knowing who to call. I often call my stepson first. After I explain the problem to him, I usually say, “Who should I call?” He always has an answer.

As I said a few weeks ago, I also read How Your House Works by Charlie Wing, which helped me a lot mostly by de-mystifying a few things. Wing describes ten aspects of a house that need care and maintenance, and for me, going from worrying about an infinite number of things to only ten was a huge relief.

The most impactful thing I’ve done, though, is change how I think about the house.  For most of the time that Tom has been dead, I’ve thought of the house as a thing to fear, worry about, be mystified by, and spend money on. Over the summer, I started thinking of my house in terms of something I have a relationship with.

That subtle shift has completely changed the way I think about things breaking, maintenance, and the like. It helps me notice that I take care of the house and she takes care of me. Yes, I’ve decided my house is female and her name is Eleanor. I say good morning and good night to her. When she makes a funny sound, I ask her what she needs, just like I do to my dogs when they make a noise I don’t understand.       

Thinking of my relationship with Eleanor makes me feel like we’re in this together. We both miss Tom, but we must move forward without him. I appreciate that she mostly keeps working and doesn’t complain. She’s a trooper, she’s nurturing, she’s strong. Like anyone getting on in years (she’s 110 years old), she needs some help from time to time, and I’m happy to help her when she needs it, just as I hope she’s happy to take care of me when I need it.

One of the way’s I continue to honor my husband is by taking good care of the house he put so much work into. Eleanor has become a trusted friend.

life skills

Any Day Could Be My Last + Life Is Short = A Few Practices for Savoring Life

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The death of a partner that you thought you’d spend the rest of your life with really puts a point on how short life is and how suddenly and unexpectedly it can all be over. My husband was only 61 when he died. There was a time when I thought 61 was ancient, but now that I’m in my 50s, 61 sounds quite young.

My stroke when I was 27 jolted me with the realization that any day could be my last. I’m realizing now that although there is some overlap, life is short is not the same as any day could be my last.

Any day could be my last drives me to notice and appreciate the sacredness in each day. It urges me toward gratitude. It makes me wake with the thought, “I get another day!”

Life is short motivates me to enjoy and savor the experiences I get to have and to stop looking at life as a to do list. It makes me want to slow things down.

These two thoughts together have made me become much more intentional about how I use my time. I’m very aware of what Oliver Burkeman calls “the finitude of life”—the concrete, no-way-out endpoint that awaits every single one of us. We’ll all die with something left on our to do list. Since my husband died, my goals are less about getting a lot done and more about being intentional about what I do and savoring those things.

Here are some of the practices that have helped me with this:

Planning a big adventure and a little adventures every week.

This is one of the practices Laura Vanderkam talks about in her book Tranquility by Tuesday. Vanderkam is a work-life balance expert. Last year, I took an online course she designed around the nine guidelines (she calls the “rules,” but I shudder at that word) she says will enable you to achieve “tranquility by Tuesday.” My favorite guideline is to plan a big adventure and a little adventure every week.

The idea is to do something beyond your normal routine every week. A big adventure is something that takes 3+ hours and a little adventure can be done in a week or two. Vanderkam says—and I have experienced this—that having these adventures every week will have the effect of slowing time down because there will be something different and memorable happening every week.

I have embraced this guideline with gusto. Some recent big adventures include spending half a day wandering around a neighborhood in Denver I wasn’t very familiar with, paddleboarding for the first time, and going to a dinner party where I knew no one but the host. Little adventures have included trying a new restaurant, making a new recipe, and calling a friend I haven’t spoken to in a while.

What I count as an adventure is flexible and evolves. For example, when I first began taking dance lessons, I considered each dance lesson a little adventure, but over time, as dancing became more comfortable to me, I stopped counting each lesson as an adventure. At this point, I’ve only danced with my instructor, so the first time I dance with another partner, that will likely count as a little adventure for me.

Being a minimalist.

One of my favorite minimalist writers, Joshua Becker, says that there is no one right way to do minimalism and what one person considers minimal, another could consider to be excessive or too Spartan.

For me, curating the material items I keep in my life gives me a daily sense of calm. I enjoy uncluttered counters and shelves and a space that feels like it has some breathing room. Of course I have stuff, and some would say I have too many books, too much cookware, and too many shoes. It’s easier for me to savor what I do have when nearly everything I own gets regular use.

Practicing minimalism makes it easy for me to give things away that I no longer need or love. I get more joy out of giving something away than I do from keeping it in a closet.

Minimalism also impacts the things I do. There are so many more things that I want to do than there is time for me to do them, so I have to accept that I can’t do all the things.

Related to minimalism is Swedish Death Cleaning, the practice of getting rid of things while you’re alive instead of leaving it to your survivors to purge your stuff (and feel a ton of guilt or anxiety about it).

Maintaining a gratitude practice.

I’ve had some form of gratitude practice since my stroke, but since my husband died, I’ve formalized it by keeping a gratitude journal. The practice is simple: every night, while the water for my tea heats, I jot down three things I’m grateful for that day. Last night I was grateful for how good the lavender in my yard smells, the pinkness of my dog’s belly, and that a toe that has been hurting hurt less.

Thinking of my books-to-be-read as a river to dip into rather than a to do list.

This is an idea I got from Oliver Burkeman. Making the shift in my mind was simple and I immediately felt lighter. When I thought of my book pile as a to do list, I always felt a bit of panic. “Holy shit,” I would think. “What if I die tomorrow and I haven’t yet read all this?!” And then I would feel tremendous pressure to sit down and start reading RIGHT NOW in case I died tomorrow. There was no savoring.

But once I started thinking of that pile as a river to dip into, I released myself of the expectation that I would ever read it all. I won’t. And that’s ok. Now I can happily savor what I do read. And if I die tomorrow, leaving the vast majority of the pile unread? It’s ok.

grieving, life skills, normalizing what should be normal

How + Why to Hold Space

The loved one I mentioned last week who was dying passed away and their memorial celebration was over the weekend. It was gut wrenching to see another person go through the experience of being widowed. The death was expected but as I’ve said before, that doesn’t make it any easier for those left behind. My loved one’s widow had the same shocked, glazed look I probably had after my husband died.

Experiencing the death of another loved one and witnessing his wife become a widow has brought on fresh waves of grief for my husband. At the memorial event, for example, I felt like I knew exactly what my husband would do and say—I could nearly hear him and see him. I swear I felt his arm around me and his voice in my ear. Sometimes I miss my husband so much I think I can’t stand it. I think I will just explode or dissolve right there.

I’m still having mood swings, feeling exhausted, and being on the verge of tears around the clock. Some nights I feel like I slept hard but I’m exhausted all day. Other nights I feel like I didn’t sleep at all.

I know all this will pass and that it is normal.

At the memorial event, I talked to other grievers and learned about how they had shown up for my loved one while he was dying or how they had supported his wife. One person sent a photo every morning of a beautiful nature scene or awe-inspiring animal from their morning walk. Another made arrangements to show up after my loved one had died with groceries to make a fresh cooked meal for his widow and sit in quiet company.

Someone at the gathering who knew I’d been widowed fairly recently asked very directly, “Is being here hard for you?” I so appreciated the elephant in the room being addressed explicitly. It was hard for me and I was relieved to have someone acknowledge that and invite me to talk about it. I didn’t want to talk about it, but I was grateful for the invitation.

I have seen so many people hold space for me, my loved one, his widow, and others experiencing grief in the last two weeks.

If you’re not familiar with the term “holding space,” it may sound like psycho-babble, but it simply means listening and offering support without judgment, without trying to fix the problem or situation. I don’t think it’s something that necessarily comes naturally or easily to a lot of us. I know I often find myself trying to fix things, so when someone says they are tired, my automatic response is to start trying to identify what is keeping them from sleeping better. That is not holding space.

Holding space in the example of someone who says they are very tired might be expressing sympathy by saying something like, “I’m sorry to hear you aren’t feeling rested,” and then perhaps remaining quiet for a beat or two to allow them to say more about how they feel or what they need.

Remaining quiet for a beat or two is something I’m working on building into my conversational skills. I grew up on the East coast where conversation tends to be fast paced and people often speak over each other. Overlapping voices, regular backchannel affirmations (like “mmm” and “uh huh”), and spirited interjections are all hallmarks of East coasters’ conversations, and when there’s a pause, everyone gets uncomfortable and rushes to fill the silence. I’ve had to work hard to become comfortable with silence and learn other conversational strategies.

A beat for me translates to a complete breath—breath in, breath out—at a normal pace. After someone speaks, I take a complete breath before speaking myself. If I’m holding space, often the person I’m holding space for speaks again while I’m taking my breath. If they don’t, I usually follow up with a neutral response to what they said—something like, “That sounds like a lot” or “I’m sorry to hear that.” Any response that sounds like it ends with an exclamation point is not neutral. “Oh my god!” or anything like it is not holding space.

Then I might ask a question about how they feel or what they need. “What would you like from me?” is a question I like to ask. Sometimes people don’t know what they want, so I might make some suggestions. “I can sit here with you quietly, if you’d like” or “I’m happy to listen if you want to talk” are two suggestions I make often.

Questions that begin with “have you tried . . .” are geared toward fixing and are not holding space. No matter how pure your intentions are, fixing is just not holding space. Fixing is fixing. Fixing is fine but it ain’t holding space!

Holding space is essentially about slowing down an interaction. Instead of rapid-fire questions and answers, think of a leisurely unfolding. It acknowledges the pain or confusion or other difficult emotions a person is feeling without minimizing them or rushing to get rid of them (which is what fixing does). And it normalizes those difficult emotions.

The tricky part is that the situations in which we need to hold space are the same ones that feel stressful to us. When we feel stressed out, are brains can go into fight or flight mode, which often produces a feeling of urgency in us. Urgency equates to speed in our lizard brains and we may want to speed up these conversations.

That’s why I make myself take a breath. It helps me slow down the interaction and a deep breath also signals to my brain that I’m safe and it can relax.  

caregiving, life skills

Caregiving as Couples Therapy

I was my late husband’s caregiver for 53 ½ weeks after he had a massive stroke. He was paralyzed on the left side and had a condition called left neglect in which his brain didn’t process anything that happened to the left of his midline. The left neglect impacted his vision, hearing, and attention, so he often didn’t process sounds that originated to his left, even though his hearing was fine. If a person he was talking to moved to his left, it seemed to him that the person had simply disappeared.

I had to help him with everything from dressing and walking to toileting. I had to manage his medications, remind of things his injured brain couldn’t retain, and do all the cooking, cleaning, and laundry. (I admit I let much of the cleaning slide.) It was a lot of work, but I miss those days tremendously.  

Caregiving gave us the opportunity to get to know each other in new ways. His stroke and my becoming his caregiver were unexpected and not something we would have wished for, but we both agreed that our relationship changed for the better because of it.

We got a glimpse of this the year before his stroke, when my vision worsened to the point where I could no longer drive. I took the bus to work, but my husband began driving me to the grocery store for my weekly trip there. The plan was for him to wait in his van while I shopped, but when we got there the first time, he said, “I better come with you to make sure you’re doing it right.”

We ended up having fun—he asked questions about why I bought the brands I bought (I usually have strong opinions about food), he tried to sneak all sorts of things I would never buy into the cart (the very worst flavors of Pringles, for example), and he made it look like there were stairs to a secret basement in the produce section. His antics that day got him tailed around the store by the security guard.

We laughed so much that we did all the grocery shopping together after that, but typically without catching the security guard’s attention. Neither of us wanted me to lose the ability to drive, but the shift in our relationship meant a little more time together. A tedious chore became a time to enjoy each other’s company.

That realization helped us understand that when I became his caregiver, we would need to continue enjoying each other’s company. A caregiver and care-recipient have to spend a lot of time together and if it’s not pleasant time, caregiving becomes a chore and care-receiving becomes an indignity. Both caregiver and care-recipient have to work at the relationship to make it a partnership.

One thing we did that made caregiving feel like a partnership was talk to each other while I was helping him with something. We simply said to each other what we were doing. If I was helping him transfer from the bed to his wheelchair, he might say, “I’m going to count to three and then you’re going to sling my ass from the bed to the wheelchair.” I would repeat that back to him, adding, “First I’m going to confirm that the brakes are on.” We would wink at each other after we had a plan. It helped us stay on the same page, but it also gave us a chance to be silly and loving.

Another thing we did was to constantly express our admiration and appreciation for each other. We both recognized that the other one was working hard, even when things didn’t go as planned. When he fell while walking across the dining room and it took us an hour to get him up again, I told him how much I appreciated the effort he was putting into walking with his hemi-walker and he expressed his appreciation for my patience. We both reassured each other that we would eventually get him up.

Because I needed to be available to him at all times, we got really good at telling each other what we needed. When I got frustrated, I couldn’t just walk away and leave him alone because he needed me for so much. When he got frustrated, he couldn’t leave without me helping him. We learned to say to each other, “I need to take a few minutes to collect my thoughts” or “I need a few minutes to myself.”

Of course we both had moments of crankiness, being short-tempered, and the like, but we also became quick to apologize. We were both angry at the stroke, not at each other.

I wish I could have learned these lessons in communication, patience, appreciation, and compassion sooner and in some other way, but I am grateful that my husband and I got to do that growing together.

grieving, life skills, normalizing what should be normal

How to Prepare Now for the Next Crisis or Death (including yours)

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned since my husband’s stroke is that people want to help. Another lesson I’ve learned is that it’s hard to figure out what you need help with when you are in the middle of a crisis. When my husband had his stroke, I didn’t know what I needed until I sat down and talked it through with a couple other people. A year later when he died, I once again didn’t know what I needed until I talked it through with someone.

So, lesson #1 is that talking it through with someone else can help.

Other things I learned:

2. Figure out before the crisis what people can help with.

Ironically, the best time to figure out what you need help with might be before you need it, when life is calm and you don’t need help. Right now, for example, you could make a list of all the mundane things you’ve done recently that someone else could have done. For me, the list might include feeding and walking the dogs, weeding, buying groceries, cooking, and doing laundry.

There may be things that someone else could theoretically do but maybe you are persnickety about how it gets done. I’m picky about how my laundry gets done. My daughter’s generation doesn’t separate colors from whites—they just throw them all in the washer together. I want my colors and whites done separately and I want some items air-dried even though the tags say they can go in the dryer. Explaining this to someone while I’m experiencing a crisis would not go well. But today, when there is no crisis, I could take a few minutes and write out my quirky laundry habits so that when the next crisis hits, I can just share the document with someone who has offered to help.

3. Let people help rather than insisting you don’t need help.

You do need help and you can receive it gracefully or make it miserable for everyone—the choice is yours. Acknowledging that you need help isn’t a sign of weakness; it’s an opportunity to connect with others and allow them into your life.

4. Talk about death with the people who will be most impacted by yours (and vice versa).

I am incredibly grateful that my husband made his final wishes clear so that I could make the decision to remove him from life support with a clear conscience, knowing it was what he wanted. Even knowing I was following his wishes, the decision was heart wrenching. It would have been exponentially more difficult had I not known what he wanted.

After my husband died, I updated my will and talked through it with my daughter and stepson. I expressed my final wishes and showed them where they could find important documents when I die. Nobody liked that conversation, but when I die, one thing neither of them will have to stress out over is where to find my will. Because we’ve talked about my will, there’s no mystery about who gets what, and because we’ve talked about my final wishes, there’s no mystery about what I want.

I suggest preparing people for these conversations. You can say something like, “Hey, I know nobody wants to think about this, but I want you to know what my final wishes are just in case.”

I have not always prepared people. I’ve tried to slip it into dinner conversations, thinking that it would be too stressful for everyone to have “talk about Elizabeth’s death” on their calendar. I’d wait for a lull in the conversation and then say, “So, I won’t live forever and there are a few things you need to know.” I recommend against this strategy. It actually does go better if you schedule the discussion ahead of time as a stand alone conversation. That allows people to do whatever emotional preparation they need to do to be fully engaged in the discussion.

The Cake website has a great checklist for organizing and sharing your final wishes.

And please, if you have pets, make a plan for their care in the event of your death.

5. Do some Swedish death cleaning.

Swedish death cleaning may sound like a scary cult practice, but it’s simply getting rid of what you don’t need while you’re still alive so your loved ones don’t have to do it after you die. I feel relief to know my loved ones won’t have to go through a packed house of my things when I die, wondering what to do with them or how to get rid of them.

6. Label for others.

Even after Swedish death cleaning, I still have things that will need to be gone through when I die, and what seems self evidently important to me may appear to be a fabric scrap to you. This is why it can be helpful to label things for whoever may find them. For example, I have a drawer full of things that smell like my husband (well, the smell has faded, but to me, they will always smell like him). I put a piece of paper in the drawer that says “Things that Smell Like Tom” so that when I die, anyone opening the drawer will understand the significance of the items.

Anderson Cooper talks in his podcast about how meaningful it was to find items after his mother had died that were labeled with their significance. I like knowing I’m doing something that Gloria Vanderbilt did.

anxiety, grieving, life skills

Cutting Wire and Shifting My Narrative

My late husband was an excellent gardener. I have many memories of him puttering around our yard, doing mysterious things that he didn’t tell me about in detail that resulted in glorious looking plants. I occasionally weeded and one time I ran out to put buckets over the plants during a hail storm, but I couldn’t be trusted to do anything else.

I’ve always been hapless with plants. I get nervous when someone gives me a plant, often apologizing for the carnage I know will inevitably result.

Knowing that my gardening specialty is killing plants (he sometimes joked that when he met me, my front yard had a scorched earth aesthetic), my husband hired a gardener after his stroke to take care of the front yard. He wanted to be able to look out the window and see flowers.

The back yard was completely forgotten about. My husband only got out there a handful of times after his stroke and everything looked dead to me, so I put my energy toward other things.

The past couple of months, I’ve had to walk through the backyard regularly to get to the garage, which I’ve been going through. Last month, I noticed greenery in two tall planters Tom had built under a trellis. I investigated and used my handy plant-identifying app to learn that one planter had salvia and the other silver lace vine. I vaguely remembered him mentioning silver lace vine—he bought it because he liked the name. Both looked surprisingly healthy considering I hadn’t noticed them in nearly three years.

It felt like a bonus connection to Tom making itself known. I am especially attached to the silver lace because I recall him talking about it. I remember him standing on a ladder, weaving the vine tendrils in and out of the trellis to encourage them to climb.

This weekend, I weeded the two planters and did some vine weaving myself. Many of the vines were reluctant to stay in place in the trellis, their own weight pulling them out. I thought, “A good gardener would probably wrap a little wire around the vine and trellis to keep it in place.” And then I sighed because I am not a good gardener, and besides, I didn’t have any wire or wire cutters.

Then I remembered the garage. I’ve gone through all the big items in there, but there are still many drawers and cabinets full of all the mysterious tools and supplies a good gardener (and carpenter) would have. Surely there had to be wire and wire cutters in there!

But I’ve been so intimidated by the drawers and cabinets. Part of it is the overwhelm of looking at a drawer full of things I can’t identify . . . am I looking at materials related to electrical work? Drywalling? The sprinkler system? Between my poor vision and my general ignorance, I don’t know. What I do know is that these things meant something to Tom, and that’s sometimes enough to send me into a meltdown.

But this weekend I had a mission: I needed wire and wire cutters for Tom’s vines. I opened the first drawer gingerly and felt flooded with the usual feelings: too much to look at and try to understand, memories of Tom in the garage, the voice in my head saying, “You idiot. You can’t garden and you don’t even know what wire cutters look like.”

Instead of turning around and leaving the garage like I normally do when those feelings hit, I reminded myself that the vines needed me to persevere.

“Hey, Siri,” I said to my phone. “What do wire cutters look like?”

Drawer number nine had wire. Drawer number ten had both pliers and wire cutters, and I was able to tell the difference thanks to Siri.

Armed with wire and wire cutters, my vine training improved immediately, and as I secured vines, I even found a few bits of wire Tom had placed on the trellis. It was proof that I was doing something a good gardener would do.

Tom always looked so peaceful when he worked in the garden. While I tried to hurry up and get it over with, he relaxed into it. This weekend, for the first time ever, I felt competent in the garden.

Actually, that’s an understatement. I felt like a total badass. Not only had I gardened competently, but I had found and used a tool! When I saw my daughter later that day, I couldn’t wait to tell her what I’d done, and being familiar with my tool ignorance, she was impressed. “You’re a girl boss!” she told me.

That might be a stretch, but I can train a vine and cut wire, which the Elizabeth of a few years ago would be mighty impressed with.  It’s a bittersweet victory. I’m proud of myself and feel connected to Tom when I use his wire cutters to tend his vines, and I wish so hard he was here to do it himself.

grieving, life skills

How to Write a Sympathy Card

When my husband died, I got a lot of sympathy cards, and every single one of them meant something to me. For weeks I let unopened mail pile up on the dining table, making an exception only for cards in hand-lettered envelopes. Those I read eagerly.

I loved the cards from people who had known my husband; knowing he would be missed seemed like validation of the heartbreak I felt. I loved equally the cards from people who hadn’t known my husband; the acknowledgment of my pain made me feel seen.

Many nights I sat on the floor with the pile of cards I’d received and read them, sobbing but feeling the embrace of all the people who had sent the cards. I still do this occasionally, nearly two years after he died.

Before my husband died, I sometimes wondered if I should send a sympathy card to someone. I wondered if I knew the person who died or the person who was grieving well enough to say anything of value. Now that I’ve been on the receiving side of those cards, I know that the answer is always YES.

If you are putting off sending a sympathy card because you don’t have time to get to the store, don’t go to the store—just write your condolences on notebook paper or a scrap of something. Really. The card doesn’t matter—your thoughts do. Some people sent cards that I’m sure they put a lot of thought into choosing, cards that featured Bible verses or a saying that they probably imagined would comfort me. The truth is, I almost never read any of the pre-printed messages. I did this for several reasons:

  • Lack of interest in truisms about loss and grief. The genre of sympathy card is not terribly original, and I wasn’t interested in cliches telling me that loss is hard or that death is a part of life. Duh. I knew that. I didn’t need the Hallmark Company to give me that information. As soon as I saw fancy embossed script lettering, my eyes glazed over.
  • Impatience to read the handwritten, personalized part. My interest was solely in the thought the sender was sharing with me.
  • Lack of contrast. On a practical level, many cards featured pale lettering on a white background or white lettering on a light background, which I can’t see.

The card itself doesn’t matter. Which means you should write something, not just sign it and stick it in the mail. (Although, frankly, those cards were nice to get, too, so if all you can muster is a signature, I’d say go ahead and send it.)

What to write?

My favorites were the cards that included stories about my late husband—little anecdotes about him saying something funny, doing something outrageous, wearing something silly. People told me what they would most remember about him or what they would most miss. Some people tucked longer handwritten notes into the cards they sent because they had so many stories to share. A few people included photocopies of poems they thought I would appreciate.

Grief is overwhelming and blurry. The cards that included something specific about my late husband made the blurriness disappear for a moment. I could focus briefly on the particular memory or quality they shared. A note that mentioned the canoe Tom built himself made me remember the canoe in our garage, Tom deciding to sell it, and then deciding to give it away to a man with a son who would appreciate it enough that Tom no longer cared about the money. A note that mentioned the colored lights in Tom’s garage workshop briefly transported me to the time I woke up in the middle of the night and Tom wasn’t in bed. I couldn’t find him in the house, so I went out to the garage, where I found him tinkering with a motorcycle as the lights shifted from blue to green to purple.

The next time you need to send a sympathy card, consider mentioning

  • what you will most remember about the person who died. Maybe it’s a quality of theirs, a particular outfit, a memorable catch phrase. Perhaps they taught you something or recommended a book to you that made a difference.
  • what you will most miss about the person. Even something tiny is worth mentioning: seeing them every evening when you walk your dog, hearing them trigger their car alarm every Monday morning.
  • a brief anecdote. This only needs to be a sentence or two. You can just say, “I’ll never forget the time . . .” It doesn’t have to be detailed.

If you didn’t know the person who died, talk about what you know from the person you are writing to. In the cards I got, people said things like “I remember you talking about your epic motorcycle trips with Tom” and “I remember noticing the photo of the two of you together in the snow on your desk.”  

Consider what is most likely to comfort the person you are sending the card to. This may be something other than what would comfort you. If you are very religious but the person receiving the card is not, a non-religious card may resonate better and actually provide more comfort, and vice versa.

Stay focused on the purpose: to make them feel less alone. You don’t have to “fix” anything for them, make them laugh, or write the best card every written. Even the cards I got that had nothing but a signature made me feel loved.  

Phrases to avoid:

  • Any sentence that begins with “at least,” such as “at least he’s no longer in pain” or “at least she’s now with [her dog that died last year].” These words minimize the pain your recipient is feeling, whether than is your intention or not. You can say “I’m glad he’s no longer in pain” or “I imagine her playing with [her dog that died last year].” Do you see the difference the phrasing makes?
  • “Let me know what I can do.” This seems helpful, but in actuality it puts one more burden on the recipient—now on top of grieving, they have to be a project manager. For better ideas about how to offer help, read my post.
  • “I can’t imagine.” Sure you can, and saying you can’t puts distance between the recipient and you. The point is to close the distance not increase it.

Finally, I’m not a fan of wishing people strength when they are grieving.