Allow me to paint a picture of what my life is about to look like. I will be able to go to the pool and bring a random assortment of trashy magazines to read at my leisure.  No one will scream, “Mom!  He just hit me!” from somewhere in the house the moment I sit […]

While Mile High Mama blogger Catherine Tidd has spent the last few years developing a global online support group for widows and widowers (www.theWiddahood.com), she has also been hard at work on her memoir, Confessions of a Mediocre Widow, which took the number two spot on the local nonfiction bestseller list less than two weeks […]

“My kids don’t know what a struggle it has been to make sure that their holidays are as magical as mine were when I was young, before I was changed by loss. They don’t know how hard I’ve searched for my Christmas spirit – only to find it buried in the sands of time that has become my healer.”

Back-to-school time is here and like many parents, I am greeting the first day with a sigh and a, “Whew.  I made it.”  While my three kids and I had a great summer together and it seemed to fly by, I couldn’t help but feel relieved to know that a break from hearing “Mom!  He […]

Acknowledging the anniversary of the death of a spouse is difficult for many widows.  Usually, aside from the questions about dating and in-laws, that is the question we ask each other the most:  “What do you do to get through the day?” And after six years, I’m beginning to think I’ve been doing it all […]

As a widow, I was thrown into the deep end of the single parenting pool when my kids were 5,3, and 1 year old and from day one, I knew it would be tough. And while I can sympathize with the pain of divorce and can understand how hard it must be for many parents to relinquish the thing(s) that are most important to them – their children – on a regular basis to someone they’re not all that crazy about anymore…my struggles as a widowed single parent are a little different.

What do you get when you mix a 17-year-old girl who lives with friends, has no boundaries and no desire to obey the rules that governed most people? You get Me. Everybody thought I was too young, no one said it but one could read it in their gaze when they saw my swollen belly. […]

In 2001 I started dating the handsome man that would eventually become my husband. We wanted to start a family (neither of us had kiddos yet) but were in our late thirties. Of course, I had a plan. I gave us a year to get pregnant the old-fashioned way. If that didn’t happen we would […]

I have a love/hate relationship with Valentine’s Day. On the one hand, I can’t get enough chocolate. When I was pregnant with my son (who was born on February 11th), my craving went into hyper drive and I went through several boxes of Hershey’s Pot of Gold. Every day.

Dealing with the holidays after the loss of a loved one isn’t easy for anyone. Believe me, I know. I used to be the kind of woman who had all of her Christmas shopping done by the beginning of October and her decorations up during Thanksgiving weekend. I was so together that anything that needed to be mailed to family out of state was packed up and at the post office no later than December 10th in order to avoid the holiday rush. And I was so excited for Christmas that I couldn’t narrow down my cookie selection so I made them all, cheerfully placing them in tins and delivering them to my neighbors with a smile and a “Merry Christmas!” But in 2007, all of that changed.