Paris

We made a grand entrance into Paris, as you can see from the photo below. Honestly, my breathe was taken away as our driver pulled up to our hotel and I saw the decorations reminiscent of a winter wonderland. It’s as though someone knew we needed to be showered with lightness and love as 2012 draws to a close.

I’m not sure I can capture all that has transpired this year in an eloquent fashion. A lot of it you already know. Frankly, as I read through posts from this past year in preparation for writing the second book, I wonder if I shared too much. Did I give away parts of myself that should’ve been kept private? Did I bare too much, and leave myself vulnerable?

Did I grieve the wrong way? Continue reading »

My head feels like Dorothy’s house as it’s swirling into the eye of the tornado. This is what New York City does to me. It divides my heart from my mind. This is something I was beginning to realize even before Michael died. In six days it has slowly undone the careful stitches Paris wove into place. For a few weeks my fractured life felt whole again. Going to a new city, embracing a new culture and way of life, gave special meaning to learning a new kind of normal.

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Paris and I have become fast friends. I say that with a bit of a heavy heart knowing I will have to say goodbye to her two weeks from today. Funny how when I arrived two weeks ago, I wondered if this trip was a mistake. It took me a week to find my footing, and understand that even if I was a stranger in a different country, I was still the same person lurking within my own skin.

As I write and watch the rain pour from the sky, the weather mimicks the tears yearning to come out. The dam broke a little this morning as I climbed the stairs to my apartment. I’d just finished a shop at the organic farmers’ market on Boulevard Raspail, and as I turned the corner to my block, the reality that it was yet another Sunday hit me hard. Tears flowed past the rim of my sunglasses, and I couldn’t hold them back.

At this time 49 weeks ago, I was still sleeping in our bed. He was awake with the girls, letting me sleep in as he always did on Sundays. I would wake to make love to him, cook breakfast, and eventually go out and do something I always do—shop for groceries.

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A big part of being in a healthy relationship is learning to say two things: 1) I’m sorry and 2) I was wrong. They’re all but five words when combined, but the inherent feelings of inadequacy that are intertwined with admitting them makes them difficult to utter. In a good relationship, where trust and love is both solid and reciprocated, there is no fear in saying them.

But what about the solitary relationship we share with ourselves? There is no one to hug us when we admit them, or to make a joke and break the tension of the moment. It is so easy to intellectualize how I need to be easier, more gentle to myself, yet so hard to actually implement it in the moment.

I’m exacting, precise, determined—perhaps this is why baking is something I love. I respect the rigidness of the variables involved in making a cake. Yet, I’m forgiving of my foibles in the kitchen, and harsh of the others that happen in my every day life. Go figure.

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