Losing your person doesn’t just break your heart—it can dismantle who you thought you were. This episode explores the quiet identity collapse that follows and the slow, gentle becoming that comes after.

I Just Want My Life Back is my personal audio journal — small, quiet reflections from a life reshaped by loss. It’s separate from my professional work with the International Firebird Book Awards, yet deeply connected in spirit: both are about truth-telling, expression, and finding meaning through words. These are qualities I also value deeply in the books and authors we honor.

This year, grief can walk beside you —
But it does not get to carry you, and you do not have to carry it into the new year.

I Just Want My Life Back is my personal audio journal — small, quiet reflections from a life reshaped by loss. It’s separate from my professional work with the International Firebird Book Awards, yet deeply connected in spirit: both are about truth-telling, expression, and finding meaning through words. These are qualities I also value deeply in the books and authors we honor.

Sadness isn’t simple—and neither is grief.
This episode unpacks how layered emotions inside sadness can lead to an identity crash, and what happens when the old version of you no longer fits.

I Just Want My Life Back is my personal audio journal — small, quiet reflections from a life reshaped by loss. It’s separate from my professional work with the International Firebird Book Awards, yet deeply connected in spirit: both are about truth-telling, expression, and finding meaning through words. These are qualities I also value deeply in the books and authors we honor.

Grief isn’t just emotional — it’s physical. Losing a spouse disrupts the balance your nervous system relied on. In this episode, I discover co-regulation and how I’m learning to live with his absence.

I Just Want My Life Back is my personal audio journal — small, quiet reflections from a life reshaped by loss. It’s separate from my professional work with the International Firebird Book Awards, yet deeply connected in spirit: both are about truth-telling, expression, and finding meaning through words. These are qualities I also value deeply in the books and authors we honor.

Thanksgiving alone - Grief isn’t something I want to decorate over. In some twisted way, I want to allow myself to feel the sting of the empty chair, the silence in the room, the absence of a familiar laugh.

I Just Want My Life Back is my personal audio journal — small, quiet reflections from a life reshaped by loss. It’s separate from my professional work with the International Firebird Book Awards, yet deeply connected in spirit: both are about truth-telling, expression, and finding meaning through words. These are qualities I also value deeply in the books and authors we honor.

Maybe grief comes back because healing happens in layers, not moments.
Because the heart can only process so much at a time?
Because certain truths take longer to absorb?
Because some bonds leave echoes that don’t fade on command?

I Just Want My Life Back is my personal audio journal — small, quiet reflections from a life reshaped by loss. It’s separate from my professional work with the International Firebird Book Awards, yet deeply connected in spirit: both are about truth-telling, expression, and finding meaning through words. These are qualities I also value deeply in the books and authors we honor.

The scent of smoke, the crackle of wood, the warmth of a first woodstove fire—moments that were once shared now feel heavy with memory. Today I reflect on loss, love, and keeping the hearth alive alone.

I Just Want My Life Back is my personal audio journal — small, quiet reflections from a life reshaped by loss. It’s separate from my professional work with the International Firebird Book Awards, yet deeply connected in spirit: both are about truth-telling, expression, and finding meaning through words. These are qualities I also value deeply in the books and authors we honor.

His garage was not just a storage space; it was a museum of memories, each item telling a story, just waiting to be unearthed.

I Just Want My Life Back is my personal audio journal — small, quiet reflections from a life reshaped by loss. It’s separate from my professional work with the International Firebird Book Awards, yet deeply connected in spirit: both are about truth-telling, expression, and finding meaning through words. These are qualities I also value deeply in the books and authors we honor.

Phantom smells are strange. They feel real, vivid, almost tangible. And yet, they come entirely from memory, from emotion, from the part of your brain that holds people and moments you can’t let go of.

I Just Want My Life Back is my personal audio journal — small, quiet reflections from a life reshaped by loss. It’s separate from my professional work with the International Firebird Book Awards, yet deeply connected in spirit: both are about truth-telling, expression, and finding meaning through words. These are qualities I also value deeply in the books and authors we honor.

I’ve come to see grief as an uninvited guest—an unpredictable intruder who bursts into your life without warning. It fills your space with its heavy presence, only to vanish just as suddenly as it arrived.

I Just Want My Life Back is my personal audio journal — small, quiet reflections from a life reshaped by loss. It’s separate from my professional work with the International Firebird Book Awards, yet deeply connected in spirit: both are about truth-telling, expression, and finding meaning through words. These are qualities I also value deeply in the books and authors we honor.