Forever Carrying Camden

December is a difficult month. Not just as a bereaved mother preparing for Christmas with an aching heart, but as a teacher. All of my sophomore students take their English II End-of-Course assessment, a state mandated exam, before Winter Break. This exam, though an arbitrary measure of "proficiency," is worth 20% of their overall grade, per the state's directive. Because of this, we spend a ton of time reviewing in the weeks leading up to the exam. One of the many skills we further develop and (attempt to) master in my course is the art of defining unknown words based off of what is happening around them (i.e. using context clues to determine the meaning of a term or phrase). One of the ways I teach my students to tackle an unfamiliar word is to use morphemes to "break the word down." As a class, we learn over 100 prefixes, suffixes, and roots, and we practice stringing together the word parts we know to determine the meaning of longer, more complex terms. ...

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. I cannot even begin to pretend that the holidays have been easy since losing Camden. Every moment of every day is so incredibly hard; the holidays are no different. The pain that, most days, is a constant throbbing in the background of an otherwise happy, sometimes even ecstatic, existence magnifies a million times when the end of the year rolls around. The period of time from my birthday in October until after the New Year is one of the worst. I'm not writing this post with the intent of offering a series of steps that make the holidays manageable. I cannot even fathom saying that if you do this, this, and this, you will somehow be able to make it through. There's no right or wrong way to navigate through grief during this time, but I do have a few suggestions. I've made it this far, right? Through (almost) three sets of Thanksgiving turkeys, Christmas hams, and several flutes of New Year's Eve champagne. I'm no expert, but I have endu...

It’s been a while. Far too long. This blog began as a way through grief. I found the inspiration from a counselor I was seeing at the time. The idea was that writing could (and would?) be a release through the darkest days of my life.  So, I wrote. I wrote for hours on end, and I wrote often. I didn’t share all of those entries because they were mine. Just like My Sweet Boy was mine. Some things are just too private to share. I began to think that the only way to survive the hand I had been dealt was through sharing my experiences with those forced to endure the same. I thought that, if I wrote enough, I would get through it. If I could get it out, I could be free. I would release the thoughts and in doing so, I would release myself and the unbearable pain I found to be almost overwhelming. I would come out on the other side, scarred but standing. And I did. I am. I am scarred, bruised and battered...and I am still standing. I’ve since realized that grief isn’t someth...