Carry on Castle: Living with Grief

                                                        Because I wanna do this now       Before Dan and I got married we took a premarital counseling class. I'm not really sure why, other then the small college we went to was really big on it. I remember exactly one thing from that class. In it we took the Myers Briggs personality test. It assigns letters to your personality and then those letters represent a characteristic or trait you have.  You get four letters, If I thought long and hard I could remember what all four of Dan's and mine  were but I don't wanna think that hard. What I do remember, what I have never forgotten from this class we took 22 years ago is that Dan was a P and I was a J. I don't remember what those letters stand for but I remember what they mean. A J is a doer, a J gets shit done. A J gets...

I meet a new widow friend the other day. She had the shitty luck of recently joining our club.  She mentioned how she had tried to go grocery shopping and had a panic attack, "totally didn't see that coming" she said. I commiserated with her "ya it happens."  Us widows talk about it all the time. I've even written a blog about it, you can read it HERE  if you want. So that got me to thinking about things that people don't know happens in this awesome new life of widowhood and I decided to make a list for all of you who are lucky enough to have no idea this was a thing and for all of you who are new in the club so when it does happen to you you can say o ya thats normal. This is a real list,  this isn't a ten things you didn't know but you actually did already know because you've heard it somewhere or other. This isn't grief comes in waves and you will always love them no matter what kinda stuff. This is the down and dirty, we have to...

I bought tickets to the play "Dear Evan Hansen" a few months ago, I had heard great things about it and was really excited to go. "Whats it about?" someone asked "Well its about this kid that commits suicide and how his friends deal with it" I know sounds fantastic right. But if I've done anything in the last five years it's been embrace everything grief related, so I was excited to see Dear Evan Hansen. When I originally bought the tickets I asked Baby Girl if she wanted to come along she said "Nope looks boring, whats it even about?" She wasn't enthralled by the explanation I had, so I didn't get her a ticket. My mother in law went with some of her friends a few days before me. She called me after seeing it. "Jennifer every single high school and middle school child in America needs to see this play" "It was that good huh" "Yes it is that good" My boyfriend Justin and I went to the play....

The summer after Dan died we were at our annual beach trip with his family. It was fathers day weekend and we were going to spread some of his ashes while we were there. I remember very little about that trip. I remember walking along the beach with my sandals dangling from my hand, so many tears in my eyes I could barley see the ocean, screaming and yelling at Dan and God, both equally. I still don't know who I'm madder at. I remember one conversation I had with my sister in law, she said "So what are you doing there?" I thought it was pretty obvious but ok I'll tell her. "Coloring" I was coloring in one of those adult coloring books, I had been coloring in it all week, pretty non stop. "Well duh I can see your coloring, what I meant was I've never seen you do that before, I was wondering if it was something your therapist had told you to do or something." O I get it, Jenny's going crazy so she needs something to calm her mind down w...