Staying Unfinished: An Invitation into the Liminal Landscape and Courageous Leadership of Grief

By Jennifer Miller Sabatier

Staying Unfinished: An Invitation into the Liminal Landscape and Courageous Leadership of Grief offers a raw and intimate exploration of loss, transformation, and healing. Written in the wake of the sudden death of her husband, Jennifer Miller Sabatier, M.A. takes readers

• Language: English
• Publisher: Golden Threads Publishing
• Release date: Sep 16, 2025
• ISBN: 9798349416132

Book preview

Staying

Unfinished

An Invitation into the Liminal Landscape and Courageous Leadership of Grief

By Jennifer Miller Sabatier, M.A.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing by the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. For information regarding permission, contact the author at [e-mail].

Copyright ©2025 by Jennifer Miller Sabatier, M.A.

Published by NewBloomz LLC/Golden Threads Publishing

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America First Edition: September 2025

www.newbloomz.com

For more information, address:

Golden Threads Publishing

108 Winn Wood Rd.

Wimberley, TX 78676

Editor and publishing guide by Rebecca Gober

Author photo by Paige Wilks

Book cover art by Rachel Turner

Interior formatting design by Mobeen Fazal

Summary: In Staying Unfinished, Jennifer Miller Sabatier, M.A., offers a deeply personal and reflective exploration of grief following the sudden loss of her husband, Edmond Moreland. Drawing from her personal experience and professional background in consciousness studies, rite of passage work, and grief counseling, she invites readers into the liminal space—the in-between realm where the old reality has vanished, and the new has yet to form. Through reflections, journal entries, and poetry, she illustrates that grief is not a linear process but a disorganized journey—one that allows us to embrace the unfinished and find personal growth in the midst of chaos. The book serves as a companion for anyone who has faced deep loss or is supporting someone through it, offering an honest, vulnerable perspective on healing and the ongoing process of becoming.

In the beginning, there was the middle and the end.

—A wisdom told to me by a Soul-Sister, Amy Lyles.

This book is dedicated to my children and in honor and memory of my dear, sweet husband-partner-friend Edmond Sidney Moreland, Jr. Thank you all for all of it.

I offer gratitude to the friends and family who held us and walked with us and continue to do so. There are so many, and you know who you are. The calls, texts, visits, and gestures of love touched our hearts deeply. Thank you for your endless love-listening, hand-holding, tear-sharing, meal-prepping, kid-caring, dog-walking, and story-telling. I have endless gratitude for the friendships, both new and old, that have deepened and grown, allowing me to stay and put pen to paper. Thank you to those who were touched by the experience and encouraged me to write this book. My guides and mentors, both living and dead, thank you for loving me unconditionally, telling me the truth, and teaching me by your example. Britt, thank you for always holding me in your unwavering love, sharing in a ridiculously dark humor, and laughing and crying with me always. I send a million kisses to my soul-sister Jenn, who listened to me read my written words and asked me hard questions as I labored through what to put into print and what to hold onto for myself. I am thankful for the companionship and partnership of my editor and publishing guide, Rebecca Gober, who helped me birth this book.

I love you as you are. I love you as you are becoming. I love you no matter what.

Introduction

Like most of you, I wear many hats and identify with a variety of roles. And, also like most of you, I have experienced change, challenge, transition, and transformation through life’s experiences. I have been a wife twice; I am the mother of five children and am a single parent for the second time. My professional experiences have included direct services within various social work organizations, grant writing and development, educating and training adults and youth, working with at-risk populations, and counseling and facilitating individuals and groups through grief, loss, and initiatory experiences. I have an undergraduate degree in sociology and a graduate degree in psychology with an emphasis in consciousness and transformation. My other training includes certifications in grief and loss, reiki, and eidetic imagery. I am also a visual artist and writer. While much of my time is spent in the realm of healing, I do not call myself a healer but rather feel that I allow healing inspiration and vibration to move through me. None of these roles are who I am, but they are how I show up in service. I have come to understand that attaching or identifying too much with any one of these aspects of my lived experience is a loss of self, a valuing of one role over another, and perhaps a dishonoring of the opportunities themselves. However, these roles, responsibilities, and training have supported me over the last year in ways I could not have anticipated.

I am grateful for the relationships and community forged in advance of April 4, 2023, and for the bonds that have only grown and deepened since that day. Explaining the various components of what has become my worldview over the last fifty-plus years would be a book all its own, and reading my thesis is probably not anyone’s idea of fun. My particular outlook is situated in a field of study and practice that may or may not be familiar to the majority of readers. For these reasons, I am offering an introduction to the book I did not know I was going to write to provide an orientation of both common language and vantage point.

At times in my narration, I shift from the pronoun I to we. The use of we here is not meant to be judgmental, patronizing, or presumptive that these experiences are always the same or shared by all grievers. Using the pronoun we in particular references the more general aspects of grief that have been both my experience and what I have witnessed through my work. The intentional use of we is my way of drawing attention to the topographical map of highs, lows, twists, and turns that are typically thematic for those enduring intense loss. So much of what we bury or dissociate from occurs because we do not have a schema or paradigm within which it seems to fit. Normalizing the provocative states of grief with a broad brush stroke we is an invitation to engage support rather than isolate during these challenging emotional times. The use of we is meant to be inclusive and communal and feels like an appropriate way to address the feelings of isolation that so often accompany grieving. The fluctuation is also intended to demonstrate the shared aspects of we and the specific I in order that the reader might connect to their own specific experiences within the common threads of grief. Grieving, after all, is normal.

There are also places where I capture particular conversations I have had with Edmond or others after their death. For me, because relationships continue beyond human form, these conversations show up regularly. I share these in italics and have written in the present or present perfect tense when referencing or inserting these conversations. The fluctuations between past, present, and future also occur because time through liminal states like grief does not move in a linear fashion. Liminal states of trauma, grief, or other non-ordinary states are characterized by timelessness where past, present, and future exist simultaneously. It is difficult to conceptualize, but often, something best understood and known through experience, even if that is experienced through reading and imagination.

To create a framework for my readers, I am providing some key concepts and terminology. Because this book is a reflection of my personal experience of an entirely unanticipated event, the framework is juxtaposed, a life jacket of sorts, over the uncharted waters in which I have been swimming, drowning, and flowing in for the better part of a year or more. The framework I offer you is the backdrop, lifeblood, concepts, and terminology that have been part of my lived experience for most of my adult life. For some readers, it will feel more or less foreign or counter-cultural to more mainstream, traditional, linear, and/or logic-based perspectives. For those who have stepped or steeped in consciousness theory and practice, various wisdom traditions, or rite of passage experiences, it will likely feel more familiar. Regardless of your experience of consciousness studies, it is an important part of grounding this book, especially considering the topics of grief, loss, and transformation in this particular context.

For at least the last two decades, my personal and professional life has existed within the paradigm of consciousness, transformation, and rite of passage processes as a means of supporting transitions and change. Finding my way toward both the study and practice of consciousness and transformation has given me a way to fully embrace the power of my imagination as an embodied experience. No longer is my imagination an escape from what is traumatic and daunting, but a purposeful and powerful way through these difficult and challenging moments. This perspective of embodied imagination within consciousness theory informs my writing and living. My graduate school research and the model I have developed to use professionally with clients are also deeply influenced by various consciousness theories, methods, and practices. Some of what has been synthesized is derived from ancient wisdom traditions, local Indigenous knowledge systems, myth-ritual theory, rite of passage work, mythology, and eidetic imagery.

While this book does not delve into the intricacies of its influential parts, I do, at times, touch on or reference particular details, authors, or concepts that are worthy of acknowledgment and further study for those who are interested. This book is the outcome and expression of the parts and impressions that live within me at the intersection of the experience of the sudden death of my husband and partner.

My writing has historically been academic and highly organized. Even my creative, poetry, and content writings have a clear structure to them. In contrast, this book is not organized in a traditional sense or in the ways I have typically composed because the nature of grief is disorganized,

messy, and chaotic. If there is any method or framework for this book, it is the heuristic process.

Heuristic approaches entail trial and error and personal learning, and the rules and processes for this are not always clear. Heuristic approaches are not always efficient or fully effective but often solve the problem at hand, at least in part. In that sense, I wrote like I paint, from the gut without any plan or predisposition of what will eventually emerge from the canvas. The words flowed through me because they could not be contained or controlled. I wrote this book after the unforeseen death of my husband, and writing it saved me and allowed me to stay. I wrote from a place of self-discovery and painful, beautiful learning as I went through the various layers and experiences that are part of the grieving process. This book reflects my first-hand and feet-on-the-ground (or up-in-the-air) experiences of deep, intense loss. I have captured the brutally, painfully unedited, honest experiences of the most difficult time of my life to date. A heuristic approach is the best way to describe my navigation through uncharted territory. Allowing the heuristic method to guide me from the inside out was not intentional but simply the name for what happened after the fact.

This introduction is my way of giving you, my reader and companion, a lay of the land so that we can walk together with a common language and perspective from the path of grief. I invite you into the liminal territory of chaos and destruction that is grief and loss, and that is necessary for the journey of transformation. My dear reader and hand-holder, come with me through this experience in case you must experience this for yourself and in the event you have the privilege to hold another’s hand through this devastation. If you have already walked this path, then you know, and I thank you for leaving your wisdom where I now walk. Together, let’s traverse through the liminal landscape and courageous leadership of grieving.

As we move through the liminality of uncertainty, timelessness, and upside-downness of intense grief, expect to be taken forward and backward in time, tossed off the edge of a cliff only to climb up the other side to see from a new vantage point. Do not rely on a linear timeline. Grieving occurs in the liminal state, the in-between places that are without a ground. The deepest kind of knowing is through presence, experiencing, and bearing witness to the experience of self and others. Some of the non-ordinary states are not honored or measurable within Western science, and they are real. Dream states, nature-based and intuitive learning, and myth-ritual practices open portals to liminal spaces, ground zero, where all possibilities exist and are held in paradox. Moving through intense loss is coming into a dark room backward. Let’s walk this landscape together, supporting each other, for we were not meant to do this alone.

A heuristic, or heuristic technique, is a way of approaching a situation or problem from a practical stance or method. Heuristic methods and practices are not always efficient, logical, optimal, rational, or linear. However, it is experiential learning that is sufficient enough to accomplish an approximate solution or short-term outcome or knowing.

Liminal, or liminal state, is characterized by nonlinear timelines, uncertainty, paradox, and a state or place where disorientation is common. Liminal states or spaces are neither on one side or the other of a particular threshold or transition but are both and neither at the same time. The image of a dark, womb-like environment may be the best analogy for what a liminal state holds in terms of an experience and its potentiality. Liminal states contain both the sacred and profane. The liminal state is marginal, ambiguous, between, and betwixt. The liminal state, derived from the Latin root limen, takes on a modern manifestation as a frontier or entrance to therapeutic healing when we locate trauma within the liminal state.

A paradigm is a vision, perspective, schemata, and worldview that provide the lenses or constructs we use for interpreting the world around us. These organizing structures are formed by the shared belief and mutual foundations of society, nature, and the workings of the world.

Transition, in the context of this writing, is the passage through a doorway as we move from the profane into the sacred territory, often associated with rituals, rites of passage, and similar ceremonies that mark a change in one’s development. The specific meaning of transition here includes historical references to the way our individual lives are composed of a series of transitions, often developmental, in the context of the culture in which one lives. A transition and change are those acts that occur in the threshold state or liminal space that are different from those of the separation and incorporation phases for a rite of passage.

Transformation is a permanent, unalterable change that occurs. This change can be physical, emotional, or spiritual in nature. Within any given paradigm, change occurs when an ordeal or trauma event exceeds the capacity of our vision for life. The ordeal prompts the rite of passage, and the level of change or transformation that occurs in the liminal state is related to the capacity of the initiate’s current paradigm. There are levels of change that include transitions ranging from first, second, and third-order changes. First-order change (incremental) occurs within a current and shared schemata or perspective. Incremental change requires practice and experimenting. Second-order change (transformative) modifies the perspective or paradigm, whereas third-order change (transcendent) involves altering the capacity of the system itself to shift its paradigm as challenging events present themselves. Transcendent change is the full integration of transformations.

Imagination and Eidetic Imagery, in this instance, have specific interpretations relative to consciousness states. Imagination and imagery reference scenes on the screen of the mind that are vivid and often prophetic or instigate epiphany and can be experienced in the body emotionally and physically. This kind of imagination entails a perceptive eye that can see the whole complex image and its potentialities. Akhter Ahsen, the father of eidetic imagery who established the work as a consciousness theory based within psychology, describes our eidetic imagination as a vivid, dynamic hologram. When these images are seen on the screen of the mind and worked with through the body, the result is a shifting of consciousness. Eidetic images are experiences that can be accessed over time and offer the seer new perspectives, connection, and resources. Images are partial or incomplete, but because they are holograms, the whole can be completed from the part. Being in eidetic images moves the seer both into consciousness and the sensual body into the holographic representation of the wound, event, or resource. Imagination includes the ambiguous concepts of myth and mythology (storytelling) that are inextricably entangled with one another. Imagination in terms of eidetic imagery provides a particular portal for deep imaginal states of consciousness.

Myth and mythology, found in all cultures in the world, provide a lasting and dynamic story of human trials and tribulations over time that can connect to the current context of a culture. Mythology provides leadership, references, and a portal toward transformation for the trials of living that are part of the human experience.

Ritual or ritual action involves an intentional act or action on the part of the initiate in the midst of transformation. This death and rebirth process is offered with the intention of making contact with the divine, spirit realm, or invisible mythological powers. Ritual acts are often a series of actions, incantations, gestures, stories, songs, or dances performed in a sacred or designated location or way. Ritual is a purposeful, intentional creation of making what is invisible and internal visible and external. Within the liminal state of the transformative process, ritual action is the medium for change. Ultimately, ritual action is our agency within the chaos and commotion of events outside of our source of control.

Rite of Passage is the process of change first identified by Arthur van Gennep and further expanded upon by Victor Turner. Within a rite of passage process, typically, an ordeal or crisis is created to thrust an initiate into a liminal state where transformation is possible. These ordeals (fasting, isolation) are constructed. However, when a crisis or trauma occurs (injury, loss), a rite of passage process can offer a transformative way through the uninvited ordeal. Rites of passage occur in all cultures and societies (birth, marriage, puberty, graduation, death) in both physical forms and social traditions. Indigenous people living within their traditional cultural constructs, purposefully and often regularly over a lifetime, separate from their current paradigm and move through an orchestrated supported ordeal to enter the liminal space for transformation or transcendence.

These rites of passage are as much a benefit to the individual as they are to the community of belonging. Initiates move through an ordeal and transform on behalf of their community. Modern cultures have sometimes lost the connection between mythology (spiritual) and ritual. The rite of passage process entails leaving the foundation or ground where one has been living and existing to step off into the liquid liminal void of darkness to discover, create, and meet myth. This experience in the liminal allows a new aspect to arise that was previously unknown so that a new foundation and ground of living can develop. Integrating the experience of the liminal is how the new foundation is developed and is evidence of transformation.

Liminal Mindset is a term I have coined to describe a way of living from a place of deep presence with immediate access to the living myth around and within us. It is a way of living from an embodied imaginal state. The liminal mindset is an umbilical cord into the threshold states, the in-between, where all possibilities exist in paradox and perpetuity.

For those interested, some of the images and photos that were part of the early iterations of this book can be viewed and found on my blog:

https://newbloomz.com/goldenthreads.

For resources related to grief, grieving, loss, and support, visit

https://newbloomz.com/resources.

For updates on this publication, please visit

https://newbloomz.com/book-staying-unfinished.

Grief Walk

What I have learned from grief is to

Allow the waves of grief to wash over me to work on me

After the waves crash

The receding water makes evident what is left of this life 

And what is gone

In the beginning 

The crash of the cold, heavy water hurts 

Crushing and terrifying 

The beach seems bare, 

all taken back by the great sea that birthed it

In grief 

Something always feels unfinished

Like this poem, it is imperfect, raw

The pattern is that there is no pattern

Only inconsistencies

Taking me over and pulling me under

In the beginning

I try to remember how

Over time, I find the rhythm 

That is part of who I am becoming

The willingness to release it

In fragmented pieces

In its rudimentary form

Mannerless, unrefined, clunky, and desperate

It makes its way into my bones

The sorrows of realizing 

We don’t always know the last time

Is happening

The last time I carry a child

Before they’re too heavy and grown

The last time we hold hands and cook together

The last kiss

That was more than the first

I know one day I will long for the bittersweet wave to wash me clean

I’ll long for the connection to what is no longer here in physical form

I will even long for the rawness of the first moment 

You were no longer here

Like the first kiss

I will walk the shoreline

Between this world and the other

I will notice how

As the waters retreat 

The shells and gems sparkle

Half buried in sand and time 

The subtleties of what grief reveals about love

are hard to remember in the beginning.

(Jennifer Miller Sabatier, M.A.)

I wrote this poem in December 2022, a few weeks after the death of a friend who had battled cancer for several years. I wrote this as a reflection of grief with regard to the sense of loss experienced when an intimate departs this world for the next realm. The poem was an exploration of the losses I have known, those I have witnessed, and the ones I could imagine and expected I would come to know.

April 3, 2023

The Day Before

I created and shared this single-sentence poster on my professional social media page and website on April 3, 2023, the day before my husband died suddenly and unexpectedly. The sentence is a gem, a golden nugget of truthfulness that had been coming through in my work with clients who were moving through intense loss. Its initial intent was to capture the essence of the experience of intentional, supported grieving. Choosing to intentionally carve out space to grieve is an act of radical self-love. There is courageous leadership in grieving this way. When we become vulnerable to the raw emotions of grief, we invite others’ hearts to break open with ours. Grieving is sacred, important work that serves self and others, and it deserves to be honored and respected. It can be a priority to honor the other side of love with time, attention, focus, and presence.

The hustle of life will continue to try to disturb us and distract us from grieving with one emergency or another. It is understandable how the demands of daily living in modern culture might consume us, and why we might allow it to swallow us whole when living here without our person is unbearable. And we will, at some level, have to mediate between our grief over the loss we have experienced and staying here in our systems of belonging. We will have to navigate how to adhere to schedules, pay bills, cook meals, show up for commitments, and put children to bed as we live with the painful burden of grief. And, none of the acts of daily life need to derail our intentional grieving. With clear boundaries and a support system, it is possible to do both: grieve and stay.

This step into intentional grieving is not a small part of living after the one we love has died or left. Our grief is the filter for breathing, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and knowing. When we choose to grieve with presence, grief is the new partner, parent, child, friend, appendage, home, community, faith, or whatever loss has devastated our existence. This sacred walk through the liminal territory of grief invites us to live in uncertainty, paradox, and possibility, and that is not an easy existence in cultures that value certainty and completion. The liminal in-between threshold space does not offer firm ground, clear choices, or a linear timeline. It is not a welcoming terrain. In grief, we are suddenly living in a place that is both no longer the life we once knew and not yet the life we will come to know. If we accept the initiation we did not ask for, we begin to allow the conflicting emotions of loss, the traumatic cognitive gaps of grief, and the drastic physical absences of the familiar to become our new landscape. Being still in a frightening, unfamiliar place requires support. Exploring and experimenting on what often feels like a new planet demands the support of what safely holds us. That womb of support that holds us may be people (dead or alive), places (natural or human-made), and beliefs (true or false). Our inclination for ritual and creative actions offers self-support through a real sense of agency and participation in what is happening to and around us.

In my work in the world, I support and walk with others experiencing intense losses as they begin a rite of passage to cross the thresholds of change toward healing and wholeness. It is my commitment to hold my client’s hand as they find their way. It is my promise to not abandon them even though I have no idea where we are going, what will happen, or where we will end up.

When I wrote, Grieving is the integration of loss into who you are becoming, I was aware of how I had, up to that point in time, witnessed these transformations with clients and engaged in personal work to integrate my own losses. In fact, I had recently finished a huge piece of personal work that was, at that time, the most difficult, deeply buried, and freeing loss to address. I was able to welcome into the fold the parts of who I am that previously were sequestered and partitioned off from my wholeness.

My life and losses are not extraordinary. Experiencing a variety of losses over a lifetime is a normal and natural part of living. Examining and tending those losses as a priority might be more or less accessible depending on any number of circumstances, including belonging to a particular family, economic, community, cultural, religious, or health system. My personal work has been prompted both by curiosity and desperation, possibly in large part due to the particular systems of my circumstances and belonging. When the symptoms of untended trauma and loss have caused discomfort or prohibited functionality, I have sought relief and healing from a variety of practitioners, bodyworkers, healers, and therapists. Even after homeostasis has been reclaimed, my curiosity continues. I have delved into liminal territory when prompted by the symptoms of trauma or grief through spiritual and religious studies, meditations, psychedelic plant-medicine, nature-based experiences, vision quests, certifications, trainings, graduate school, and pretty much anything related to consciousness and transformation.

Many only engage in active and supported grieving when the body and mind demand it and the resources are available. Regardless of how any one of us arrives at the threshold of showing up for ourselves, many find that the way forward is through the pain and heartache of dark emotions. We cannot bypass it, go over it or around it, and carrying it all in our deep pockets is emotionally expensive. The weight of unaddressed grief, loss, and trauma is taxing on our physical bodies and mental health. And these taxing emotional burdens impact all realms and aspects of our lives in one way or another. Integrating the parts of us that have become partitioned off due to trauma and/or lack of support gives us a way through toward our own healing.

In my journey, taking care of all of myself meant loving parts of myself that are not so lovely, owning my part in the losses of my lifetime, and re-evaluating my beliefs about myself, others, and God. The work is painful, uncomfortable, and usually really messy. When I wrote this single sentence, Grieving is the integration of loss into who you are becoming, and posted it on my website, it felt like a landing place, a little bit of wisdom, a conclusion even. What I did not anticipate was that this truth was not the end but the beginning of what I would have to live more deeply than ever before the very next day.

After hearing this sentence echo in my mind—a gift dropped there perhaps by some wise ancestor or angelic being—I walked home from my studio office to share it with Edmond, my husband. Edmond, who was preparing dinner, was intrigued by this idea I presented to him and asked me questions about what it meant. I did not really know what it meant, but we discussed it and turned it over, exploring its potential manifestations together. In that conversation between us that began on the day before his death, neither of us could adequately flesh out all that this statement might mean.

When he died less than 24 hours later, I was shockingly and harshly invited to continue the conversation. Sewing this enormous loss into myself has been the work of the last year, and it continues. While Edmond and I had contemplated our connection beyond death, I did not imagine the experience and experiment would come so soon. I am still learning what it looks like to integrate the loss of my true love, soulmate, partner, best friend, and lover. Being shoved off that cliff in the dark has been a brutal initiation. I have come to know more than I wanted to ever know about integrating intense loss into who I am becoming. This book and my experience are the leadership through grief that I offer myself and others.

April 8, 2023

Who Must I Become Now?

This is not what we had planned or expected. My husband, Edmond, was the healthiest man I knew. He was my partner in parenting and adventures. He was a beautiful father to our five children. He was an open-hearted friend to many. He was a brilliant, compassionate attorney who advocated for those who were vulnerable. He had planned to pick up our two youngest children from school on Tuesday, April 4, 2023. When he did not, I assumed he was tied up on a call with a client. So I texted him and then called him. When he did not answer my text or phone call, I texted again to let him know not to worry that I would get the kids. After picking them up from school, when he still had not answered my calls or texts asking if he was alright, the kids and I finished our afternoon routine and drove over to his office building. It was ablaze with emergency vehicles. Our local EMS, a board he served on for almost a decade, was there. People we know and love had been trying to revive him. The best I can determine is that we exchanged texts at 2:25 p.m., just before I saw my last client of the day, to confirm the after-school pick-up plan. After sending an email, he walked out of the office at 3:25 p.m. to get our children and collapsed and died instantly before he could cross the threshold from the porch to the parking lot.

I am a grief and loss counselor; I know this painful path. This is not my first major loss, but it is certainly the most shocking and difficult. This was not an anticipated tragedy or death, no slow train wreck or long chronic illness. And I arrived at the scene both in utter shock and with an invaluable tool kit. Some of these muscles developed through personal experiences, and some came vicariously. Somehow, my body and brain responded in ways that are still not part of my memory. Somehow, I knew who to call and what to say to my children. The details of how the gathering of women, my soul-sisters, who arrived in my living room and held all of us, escapes me. Did I call one or all of them? Did someone else intercede on our behalf? I still do not know. I am only glad they were all there.

I am ever grateful to those who have allowed me to walk beside you on your grief journey. With a foot in both worlds, one in the liminal world of grief and the other firmly on the ground of linear living, I have learned from our exchanges more than I can possibly express. Now, in this moment, I have both feet in the liminal, in-between, treacherous terrain of grief and loss. I walk beside you fully. We grieve together our unique losses in the uncertainty, surrounded and held in the Womb of Support, the Greater Love, and our Systems of Belonging.

I continue to live by my personal code: I will never ask another person to do what I have not done or am not willing to do again. This promise to my clients and myself is the momentum that will help me take the next step. I am hearing the way through in the work we have done together, finding my way to presence when I am overcome by the precious past or the daunting future. I am feeling what comes up in my body, heart, soul, and mind. I am sobbing in the waves that overcome me. I am laughing and crying at memories that arise when we speak of sweet Edmond. I am doing this work with you. I have not left you, but I have joined you.

Technology is a double-edged sword. Social media is too much, too big of a room for me right now, even to take in all the beautiful comments and care being sent my way. Texts are lovely and are coming in often and regularly. And I am grateful there is a way to turn it on and off because otherwise, it would be too much love coming in all at once. I deeply appreciate the outpouring of love and, most of all, the connection. I fear I have missed vital messages of support, and I feel it all around.

My children and I know we are not alone, and we are so lonely without him. I do not want to do this life without him. So, to find a way through, respond, and connect, I have decided to make writing and art my practice, my ritual action where I might meet Myth, God, the Universe, and perhaps myself in a way I did not know or want to be possible. Most of all, I hope it is a way to meet Edmond where he is now. And for those who are also grieving this tragic loss or other tragic, terrible, painful losses, connection is our way through.

Grieving is the integration of the loss of who I am becoming. Folding Edmond into who I am unfolding in this iteration of myself is how he and I will find our way back to each other. Oh, this is the most difficult and painful work, and I cannot live without a connection to him. I am grateful for the dreams and the signs. And they are not the same as his touch, his voice, his scent, his presence.

Edmond, dear, sweet, beautiful man, let’s keep talking. Let’s keep having this conversation to find a way to integrate this thing that has happened so I can feel you again. I love you. Where are you?

April 8, 2023

Gestures of Love

Food is definitely one of our love languages in this family, and we are bursting at the seams with meals, which means we are very, very loved. For those who have served us in this particular way, thank you, we are so grateful.

The gestures of repairing appliances, making calls, giving rides, and dropping off toilet paper, tampons, tissue, tea, Epsom salts, prescriptions, and Easter treats may seem effortless from the perspective of the giver, but it is part of our life source when the big open spaces of the world of grocery stores and pharmacies are too much for our rawness.

Edmond used to bring me coffee in bed every morning. He let me stay in bed while he made our coffee, which was a sweet gesture of love. The last version of our morning ritual involved him waking before me, lighting a candle by the kitchen window, turning on the tea kettle to heat the water, grinding D’s Coffee Beans, and making two cups by hand with the AeroPress. He would then set one of them down on the floor outside our bedroom so he could open the door with his free hand. I could always hear the mug carefully being placed on the bamboo wood floor. It was the most gentle wake-up call. He would bring me my mug of coffee with just enough half-and-half. We then sat in bed and drank our coffee together, checked the weather and news, hoped out loud for rain to fill our tanks or sunshine for William’s baseball game, laughed at the ridiculous headlines, rolled our eyes, or clutched our hearts at the state of the world, or shared a sweet piece of life one of us happen to read. We talked about the day’s plan, so we knew when our paths might cross next, usually at lunchtime. I have not been able to bring myself to make a cup of coffee for myself since he died. Friends who know of our ritual have brought me coffee the last two days. I was not sure I could drink it the first time, but I took a sip. It was a gesture of love. I finished the cup slowly.

The outpouring of love and support from all directions has been truly helpful. It does not take away the pain, but it has provided a soft cushion and a place to land. Connection is so critical to our grieving. As much as I feel like I am dangling in the abyss, I know we are surrounded by so many hands and hearts. My children and I appreciate our community more than we can express. Connection and support are echoes of love all around, and it is the sweetest sound. We appreciate all the gestures of love in every form: wish, prayer, text, coffee, candle lighting, kiss, and hug.

April 9, 2023

Owl Partner: Vision 360

As I walk the walk and offer the honest truth to others as best as I can, I have often told friends and clients that Edmond and I have had at least seven re-ups on our marriage partnership. This also means we had at least seven times when one or both of us considered abandoning the partnership. Two of the first agreements we made after our first date were 1) let’s see what happens and 2) let’s always tell the truth. I believe these two agreements and our great love for one another are what held us and allowed our partnership to grow.

The seeing what happens agreement was our way of allowing our relationship to unfold without committing to more than we had the capacity to promise at any given moment. Both of us had been previously married, and neither of us wanted to build something that would have to be torn apart because we were careless. I had three children when we met, and I did not want to hurt them with another failed relationship. Edmond was so very thoughtful and did not want to let them down, ever. Sometimes, the thoughtfulness created hesitation. We both had a variation of a fear of failing, an uncertainty about succeeding, and we walked through that together, too.

This agreement to see what happens meant taking steps that made sense for us, not necessarily what the cultural or family systems expected of us. It meant allowing things to find their own time and rhythm between us, bumps and all. Thankfully, the first agreement played out in ways that eventually brought us toward a deep partnership. Edmond opened to his ability to be an amazing stepfather, role model, and friend to my three oldest children. His fatherhood eventually burst into bloom with our two children, who completed our pack in 2010 and 2012. And our agreement allowed me to step more fully into trusting the love and relationship being offered.

The second agreement, telling the truth, was sometimes a challenge both to tell and to hear. Telling the truth meant hearing things we did not yet see for ourselves or want to own. Telling the truth was our Owl Partnership, Vision 360, seeing the other’s shadow side and shining a light there. Like the swivel of the owl’s head, with an incredibly perceptive ability to see and hear and a silence that allows, our partnership evolved into a union I did not know was possible. I trusted him to see and do what I could not, and he trusted me in the same way. We had each other’s back.

In the earliest days after the