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It’s never easy to move forward after loss, but take baby steps & cover the essentials to ease the transition.  Most of us are not comfortable speaking about death and dying (which we addressed in a March 9 blog). But even more challenging is the conversation focusing on what to do after you lose a loved one. For ourselves, despite our different scenarios of divorce after 31 years of marriage and death after a 42-year marriage, we found a set of steps that helped us return to the land of the living after being blindsided by our losses.   In...

We know from experience that one of the toughest parts of being single, especially after a long-term relationship or marriage, is coming home to an empty house. Empty rooms. Empty dinner table. Empty kitchen. Empty bed.  It’s lonely enough when you enter your house during the day and nobody’s there, but it’s far worse at night when it’s dark. It can be scary wondering if anybody got into your home and is hiding in a closet, under your bed or behind the curtain shower. Remember the Alfred Hitchcock movie, Psycho?  You open the door from the garage or the street...

“The owner of truth” or in its native Portuguese tongue, “Dono da verdade,” has become one of our favorite new expressions. Folks who possess the trait know how to wait without becoming frustrated or even angry when everything doesn’t run as smoothly as a Swiss timepiece. They shrug, are mildly amused, heartily laugh it off or even rationalize that it doesn’t matter in the great scheme of life. If only we could all think this way and all the time.   We’d like to think we’ve become more patient as we’ve aged, and in some instances, we have. Barbara has...

In a flash, we crossed the threshold from married life to becoming suddenly single at age 50+.  A divorce. A death. But loss of a partner meant a loss of many things—including sleep. No longer was there a warm body in bed beside us. We were scared and anxious at night. In addition, our minds were muddled with all the changes and issues facing us as we tried to figure out how to restart our lives. Sleep became irregular. We were exhausted. And bedtime became another source of anxiety—could we ever close our eyes and drift off peacefully?  Sound familiar? ...

Sleep for many of us aged 50-plus has become elusive. Hormones. Worry. Busy minds. A snoring husband or partner.   Perhaps, you live in an area with sirens screaming all night, your room is too hot, you don’t have black out shades on your windows, packed to-do lists, your mind is spinning faster than a Mario Andretti race, or unsettling news before bedtime about the bombing of Syria and fear if you do fall asleep, you might not wake up in the morning. Regardless why, many toss and turn all night long, then get up the next morning feeling drugged...