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Aging, Being a Widow, Being young, Birthdays, Death and dying, Grieving, Loss, Marriage, Memoir, Milestones, Mourning, Poetry, Rites of passage, W.H. Auden, Walt Whitman, widowed
no sense of direction . . .
One of the first gifts my husband ever gave me was a silver pocket compass. Having noted very early in our relationship my stellar capacity for getting lost – and notwithstanding the fact that I was then a novice driving on the American side of the road – my man intervened as he knew best. I hadn’t the heart to tell him that I was never one for “orienteering” or map-reading; I was more of a free-spirited “let’s-just-see-where-the-road-takes-us” kind of gal . . .
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Awesome Women, Breast Cancer Advocacy, Breast Cancer Awareness, Cancer Language, Culture of breast cancer, Diagnosis, Early Detection, Facebook, Family, Health, Language of Cancer, Mammograms, Memoir, Mother Daughter Relationship, Pink Ribbon Culture, Pink Ribbons, Social Media, Twitter, Wilfred Owen, World Cancer Day, Writing
world cancer day: a reprise
My breast cancer is not just about me as I discovered when my then fourteen year old daughter decided to break her silence about it. In her own way, on her Facebook wall, and on World Cancer Day 2012. Thus, on this day designated for speaking up and out, in 2014 focusing on Target 5 of the World Cancer Declaration which is all about reducing stigma and for debunking the myths that abound about breast cancer, I share with you her words and mine from February 4, 2012 . . . The Real Warrior in our House I didn’t know about a World Cancer Day. Until today, I’d known only about Breast Cancer…
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Friendship, Ireland, Irish culture, Irish Diaspora, Language matters, Phoenix Art Museum, Shel Silverstein, Social Media, Twitter, Writing
looking after Ireland . . . madeleine albright & me
The Voice by Shel Silverstein There is a voice inside of you, That whispers all day long, “I feel that this is right for me, I know that this is wrong.” No teacher, preacher, parent, friend Or wise man can decide What’s right for you– just listen to The voice that speaks inside. I’m finding that with age, it is easier for the outside voice to echo that voice that speaks inside. Like most people I imagine, I haven’t been bold enough to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth about my own life and “what I really feel” about everything. Thus, I linger somewhere between the public and the…
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Being young, Coming of age, Death and dying, John Lennon, learning to drive, Memoir, Mother Daughter Relationship, riding a bicycle, saying goodbye, Starting over, Time, widowed
wheels keep turning
He has been dead for 59 days, and we both miss him. He missed her 16th birthday and the first time she got behind the wheel of a car, his car. And she missed him. It was this past Christmas Day – her first without him – that my daughter took me for a drive. My father, a world away from his rural Derry home, had been teaching her to drive on what he still considers the wrong side of the road, reminding her to keep her hands at ten-to-two on the steering wheel and, most of all, to believe in herself.
