Honest Grief

I wrote that poem a few months after I was unanimously voted into the International Society of Widows and Widowers.  It wasn’t long into my inauguration that I discovered the importance of honesty as an essential ingredient in the process of navigating grief and loss. Day one, five years ago today, I experienced a surge …

What Do You Want?

This question came from the voice of The Advocate recently. As is with most of our conversations, they are simple in presentation, but deeply complex and long lasting in their unfolding. This open ended query can get me started by wondering, do you mean what do I want for lunch? Or what do I want …

Gifts

Hopefully, I turn 22,278 on Thursday.  Days, that is.  It’s an exercise I picked up four years ago when I entered into widowhood. The number of days allotted to my late wife was 21,923. For some reason, I outpaced her by 355 days. But it’s not meant to be a competition. It’s more of a …

Don’t Stop The Music 2023

I love looking back at the music that mattered to me over the years.  The tone and timbre of my choices reflect my emotional state at the time and it’s insightful to remember where I’ve been and why these songs spoke to me. I mark the eras of my life with music, and Spotify is …

Storyteller.

I’m a writer. And like some of my other titles, it took a long time to embrace it. It took about two years of owning my restaurant before I was ok with referring to myself as chef. I refused to wear a chef coat when I started. I didn’t feel like I deserved it. In …

Look On The Dark Side

Three weeks ago, I nearly got hit by an inattentive driver as I was crossing a busy street in the crosswalk. I’m still processing the experience. I was walking home from the grocery story, which is only three blocks from my house. I often feel lazy for driving such a short distance. In my year …

Does Prayer Work?

We had another loss in our family last night. Complications due to surgery took a young man’s life too soon.  We all knew it would be a risky procedure but it had to be attempted.  And to cover all the bases, a support thread was set up among all of us via the smartphone to …

What The Portico Experience Has Done For Me

Amid the drivel and minutiae of social media, one subject that will eventually emerge whenever I choose to access it is the practice of gratitude.  At the writing of this post, there were 37,916,065 references tagged #gratitude.  When an idea or thought becomes so familiar like that, it’s very easy for it to become unfamiliar.  …