Author: Dawn

My chest has been hurting all day. Not figuratively. Literally. A tightness that never quite lets go. I have tried to stay busy, knowing tomorrow is coming, telling myself I’m just anticipating the one year mark. But every footstep has felt heavy, like I am walking through water instead of air. The feeling kept building…

This morning, everything took a thousand times more effort than normal. My body felt heavy, like gravity had been turned up just for me. Even the simplest tasks required intention. I made myself get a few things done, figured out a couple of Christmas presents, and tried to move through the day like a functional…

It has been 365 days since I last held your gaze,a full rotation of the earth since your eyes met minein the warm, ordinary light of a day we didn’t know would be our last.Fifty-two weeks have passed since your arms wrapped around me,anchoring me in a world that still felt whole.A year since I…

Thanksgiving looks different this year. Honestly, everything looks different this year. Nearly a year has passed since Joshua went ahead of us, and I am learning, day by day, that grief is its own season, its own weather system. No one teaches you how to live inside a storm like this. No one prepares you…

If love could have kept him here, he never would have left. He would still be filling doorways with that familiar presence, still weaving himself into the everyday moments that felt softer because he was in them. He was so many peoples’ person, the warm laugh in a cold room, the steady shoulder when the…

I don’t know exactly what to call this feeling. Denial? Avoidance? Maybe. But it feels more like standing in two worlds at once. Like I’m walking with one foot planted firmly in the truth, and the other hovering just above it, afraid to land. I know Joshua is gone, the way you know a winter…

“But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.” — Luke 2:19 Some days it’s not the big moments that break me. It’s not the holidays or the birthdays or the milestones I can circle on a calendar and brace for. It’s a Thursday. It’s an ordinary morning. It’s a phone…

Today, I drove up to Joshua’s fishing spot. On the way there, I was taken aback by the beauty of the slightly changing colors of summer melting into fall. I was reminded of just how good his taste was. He loved this part of Arkansas and every season shows me another reason why. The leaves…

Yesterday, I decided to use Joshua’s messenger bag, the one he carried to work every day when he was with the law firm. I needed something to carry my own laptop in for a meeting, so I grabbed it. Inside was one of his notebooks, and I thought I’d just use it to take notes.…

The creek that runs through the cemetery near Joshua’s resting place is dried up from the summer heat. Although, today, it wasn’t scorching the way August usually is in Arkansas. It has been unseasonably mild, like the world exhaled a little, just enough to let me breathe too. I sat for a while and listened.…