Why

In case you didn't know its the new in thing to have a "why" these days. As in why do you do whatever it is that you do. If you are at a job interview you will most likely be asked what your "why" is. Why do you want that job. I think they like to here better answers then "I need money" They want you to tell them why your passionate about that particular job. (I'll tie this into grief I promise)  If your in college you will likely have to write some sort of paper about your "why" why are you studying this topic why are you passionate about that.  I think the point is you will do better career wise and be happier if you are passionate about what your doing.

When Dan and I were trying to adopt a baby (long story that ends badly) we needed a "why" it was pretty easy to come up with one.  When I started working in a retail business a few months ago the owners wanted to know my "why" Well I have an answer with all the right things in it. "I love helping women feel good about themselves. Your product is amazing. It looks really fun, etc" That answer is very true, I believe in all those things, but this answer is true too "My husband died two years ago and I'm a stay at home mom so now I have to find a job I can do from home so I continue being a stay at home mom and actually provide us with income. Also we have like a million therapy appointments now (you know because of that whole dead husband thing) and it's hard to make those when your at work."  That answer is very true.

You may have heard me say once or twice, or a lot, that I don't consider myself a writer.  Dan was a writer, probably the best writer I have ever known. He never got around to writing a book but it was on his list of things he wanted to do.  He wrote me the most beautiful poems I've ever read in my life and I'm not really a poem girl. He wrote and he wrote and he wrote.  He was one of those guys who was assigned a ten page paper and turned in a twenty page one saying "but I already cut out ten pages to get it down to twenty, the assignment shouldn't have been so small."  I was the girl going 'what is the biggest font I can possibly find. If my tenth page is just one sentence that still counts right. I wonder if they'll notice if I triple space it'.  This is how we went through college.  Shhhhhh. I'm going to tell you a little secret, please don't tell our high school English teacher.  Once Dan was supposed to do a book report.  He never got around to reading a book (he was also the biggest procrastinator in the world) So about an hour before the assignment was due he just made a book up completely in his head. He then wrote a book report about the book he made up and got an A on it.  By the way I can totally see Baby Girl doing this when she gets to high school. She is exactly like her father.

I never considered myself a writer, I defiantly never had any ambition to be, Dan could have at it.  And then Dan died. He was gone. The 12 million ways he made this world a better place were gone.  I started writing.  It's one of those things where I know how it happened but I don't know how it happened. I stumbled upon a advertisement for a grief writing class. I'm putting the link right here because it was undescribed how much it helped me and I want it to help you too.  http://www.refugeingrief.com/   I think I must have thought "well if I can get all this madness out of my head maybe I will be able to sleep better."  That's all. I wanted to sleep. I was so tired.  So this non writer took a writing class, it actually did help me sleep.  Then my therapist said if it was helping I should continue to do it even after the writing class is over, I should start a blog. Uh ok, well if I write when I can't sleep maybe it will help me sleep.  See I'm big on wanting to sleep.

Turns out I blog all the time, pretty much always about my dead husband. Turns out I like it. Turns out I have since taken two more writing classes. I'm not a writer, my spelling is atrocious, my grammar is terrible. My sentence structure has no structure. I start sentences with but and because. I do all those things your  taught not to do in high school English class. Here's another secret, don't tell my parents: I barely passed 12th grade English because I skipped class so much because I hated it so bad.

The last writing class I took the teacher wanted to know our why.  I spued out the stuff about how I'm not a writer and I honestly wasn't sure what I was doing in this class.  No wrong answer. She didn't care if I was a writer or not, she wanted to know WHY I wrote. I blurted out the first thing that came to my head "I want the world to know what they lost when they lost him" she liked that answer, she may have even thought it was profound. It's what came out when I wasn't thinking of what the right answer should be.

I could write a million blogs (I could write a book) about how exceptional my husband Dan was. It wouldn't even scratch the surface. I could talk forever about how he was the best husband and the greatest Dad that ever lived, it wouldn't be enough.  I could tell you all his ideas and theories about how he wanted to change the world, about how he wanted to make it better, he was just getting started and he ran out of time. I could tell you about how he would answer sentences in rhymes, especially to Baby Girl, he said it would make her smarter. The girl is a genius so I think he was right. I could tell you about how he was the biggest procrastinator I've ever meet in my life and it drove me nuts. I could tell you how he hoarded papers like there was no tomorrow, every article he found, every workshop he went to he kept it all.  I could tell you how full of compassion and peace he was. How just being in his presence made you calmer.  I could tell you about how and why he believed in Jesus, how he wanted to revolutionize the church. How he knew that all that really mattered was showing people you loved them. I could tell you about how he treated every single person he came across like they mattered, because they did to him. I could write for days about how he treated me like I was a queen, like I was the most important person in the world, because to him I was. I could tell you how he treated Baby Girl like she was the most precious thing in the world, because she was to us.

This is why I write, spelling and grammar be dammed.

"I WANT THE WORLD TO KNOW WHAT THEY LOST WHEN THEY LOST HIM"

That is my "why"

I wrote a book about my grief, you can read it here: Carry on castle