Living is a whole new adventure when you suddenly find yourself alone, widowed and the mother of four young boys a lot like their Dad.

Connecting During Grief
Janae Janae Thompson Janae Janae Thompson

Connecting During Grief

Thanks for being part of this. I intend to bring more content, thoughts and inspiration. My objective is to show what I have learned and gone through without my husband because mine is not a common experience.

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Grant Was My Safe Place
Janae Janae Thompson Janae Janae Thompson

Grant Was My Safe Place

He was my safe place. Our world lived and grew within itself. It created a story that was never going to end, until it did. My rock, my safety left the earth world, our family world and our TKOR world all in one instance.

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Mexico With My Kids
Janae Janae Thompson Janae Janae Thompson

Mexico With My Kids

Can I do this?  I keep asking myself this question.  Over and over, about everything I do or want to do in life since becoming a single parent of 4.  I wanted to take my kids on a trip.  Can I do this?  No, I can’t, but I will.  

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Beauty
Janae Janae Thompson Janae Janae Thompson

Beauty

Beauty has taken on a whole other meaning again.  I love beautiful things.  This morning as I was getting ready, I felt beautiful.  Not like I felt like I looked beautiful, but as I settled into the feeling of being in my body, walking into the bathroom, surrounded by the silence of being alone; that is also now a state of being for me.  I felt the feeling of beautiful inside me.

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Marbles and Grief
Janae Janae Thompson Janae Janae Thompson

Marbles and Grief

I felt the grief take over me.  It was the first time or it felt like it.  It feels like the first time every time.  Maybe because it’s new, maybe because it’s different every time. A friend shared with me a beautiful story of small objects that now have symbolic meaning to him because of certain experiences he’s had. He placed these objects together and took a picture to have it all in one place to remember.

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Lonely, But Not Alone
Janae Janae Thompson Janae Janae Thompson

Lonely, But Not Alone

Loneliness doesn’t come from just being alone.  You can be surrounded by people and feel lonely.   You can be alone and not feel lonely at all.  So far, I’ve kept myself as far as possible from feeling lonely.  I have 4 kids, so I’m always surrounded, that helps a lot.  I’ve taken on project after project, most out of necessity, but nonetheless willingly because they keep my busy. With my mind occupied my heart doesn’t have much space to feel, or heal for that matter.

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Sacred Space
Janae Janae Thompson Janae Janae Thompson

Sacred Space

Six days after Grant died - family, a couple friends and I hiked to the crash site.  The place of his final moments on earth.  The last place he touched as a living person before the impact of that touch changed him from a physically alive living person to a physically dead living person.  The site is in the middle of nowhere. 

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The 2nd Year Is Harder
Janae Janae Thompson Janae Janae Thompson

The 2nd Year Is Harder

Grant,

In 2 days it will be your birthday. You’d be 40, but you’re dead, so you won’t be. You stopped aging at 38. You managed to immortalize yourself in your youthfulness, before your age really started to show, before you were affected by all the life lessons and joys of growing older. Congratulations.

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The Last Picture
Janae Janae Thompson Janae Janae Thompson

The Last Picture

Grant had been dead for almost 3 months.

I took the boys to Cornbelly’s. It’s a fall festival with all sorts of fun turn-of-the-season games including a corn maze. It was nearly Halloween. It was the first ‘fun’ thing I’d taken the boys to do on my own.

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2nd Dead Anniversary
Janae Janae Thompson Janae Janae Thompson

2nd Dead Anniversary

Tomorrow is my second wedding anniversary without Grant. What does that make tomorrow for me? The 2nd dead Anniversary? The first one was too soon, only 2 months after he died. I was in a complete haze of life still. We had planned to go to Hawaii that year during our anniversary. Hawaii is where we got married. We’d already paid for our rental house, so I went anyway with my boys.

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