Tag: grief

Nine

Kristine Binder

It has been nine years since I signed the papers that officially ended my marriage. Eleven years since the whole process began. If you had shown the woman I was eleven years ago a picture of my life today and told her, This is where you’re going to end up, I would not have believed you. Actually, I probably would have laughed at you. And depending on what particular day of those eleven years you caught me on, I might have had a few other choice words for you too. But here we are.
Every year when this date rolls around, I think about what I have learned since signing those papers. You would think after nine years I would have this whole post-divorce, rebuilding-a-life thing figured out. Apparently, life did not get that memo. The list of things I continue to learn just keeps getting longer, and this year I think one of the biggest lessons has been that loss comes in so many more forms than I ever understood.
We tend to think about loss as death, and unfortunately I now understand that kind of loss far better than I ever wanted to. But there are so many other losses we don’t really talk about. There is the loss of a marriage and the family you thought you would always have. The loss of the dreams you had for yourself and others. The loss of relationships with people who are still very much alive. The loss of friendships, traditions, jobs, homes, plans, expectations and versions of ourselves we thought would be around forever. Sometimes there isn’t a funeral or a sympathy card or even an acknowledgment that something important has ended. You just wake up one day and realize that something you thought would always be there isn’t anymore.
And grief, as it turns out, is just as creative. Sometimes it arrives exactly when you expect it. Other times it sneaks up on you in the grocery store, on a walk, while driving, or because some song you have heard 847 times suddenly decides that today it is going to destroy you. Grief has absolutely no respect for schedules, plans or the fact that you just put mascara on. Rude.
Recently, I wrote about finally giving my grief a name. I call her Edith. Naming her has helped me understand that grief isn’t something I am going to conquer or eventually leave behind. Edith and I are apparently in this for the long haul, so we are learning how to live together. Some days she sits quietly in the corner and lets me get on with things. Other days she makes herself entirely too comfortable and acts like she owns the place. We didn’t choose each other, but if we’re going to be together, we’re learning to make the best of the arrangement. And maybe that’s another thing these nine years have taught me: not everything we carry has to disappear for us to keep moving forward.
Because loss comes in many forms, grief comes in many forms, but so does joy. So does happiness. And so does peace.
I think for a long time I expected happiness to look big. I thought rebuilding a life meant creating some shiny, fabulous new one that would prove everything had worked out. But some of the happiest parts of my life now are ridiculously ordinary. The sun on my face during a morning walk. Music in my ears. A really good book. Laughing with my kids. A conversation with a stranger I almost didn’t stop to have. Sitting in my own home and realizing how peaceful it feels. Going somewhere by myself and not thinking twice about it. Making plans because I want to make them and changing them because I want to change them.
There is a freedom in that which the woman from eleven years ago couldn’t possibly have understood. And I don’t just mean the freedom that came with signing those papers. That was one kind of freedom, certainly. But there is another kind that has taken me much longer to recognize.
There is a certain freedom that comes with the release of all the expectations attached to the people and relationships you lose along the way.
For much of my life, I carried a lot of ideas about who I was supposed to be. A wife should do this. A mother should do that. A daughter should be this. A friend should be that. This person expects this from me, that person needs that from me, and somewhere in all of those expectations was the person I thought everyone needed me to be. Some of those expectations were spoken. Plenty of them weren’t. And, if we’re being fair, more than a few of them were probably expectations I put on myself and then conveniently blamed on everyone else.
But when relationships change or end, something unexpected can happen. The expectations connected to them begin to fall away too. Sometimes painfully. Sometimes slowly. And sometimes with the surprising realization of, Wait. I don’t have to do that anymore.
There is grief in that. Absolutely. But there can also be freedom.
Freedom to decide what actually matters to me now. Freedom to change my mind. Freedom to stop explaining choices that don’t require an explanation. Freedom to discover who I am when I am no longer trying to fulfill a role someone else assigned me… or one I assigned myself thirty years ago and somehow forgot I was allowed to resign from if I had the wherewithal.
Turns out, there was no exit interview required.
Peace has surprised me even more. I used to think peace came when everything was resolved. When all the questions had answers, all the relationships were repaired, everyone understood one another, apologies were given and received, and all the loose ends were tied into a pretty little bow. Ya know….that big kumbaya moment. Bless my heart. That is not how any of this works.
Sometimes peace is accepting that something will never be resolved. Sometimes it is realizing you don’t need someone else to understand your side of the story. Sometimes it is loving someone from a distance. Sometimes it is finally understanding that closure isn’t something another person hands you. And sometimes peace is simply realizing that you don’t have to attend every argument you’re invited to. That one? Well, it took me far too long to figure that out.
For years I also thought healing was a destination. Surely at some point I would arrive at this magical place called Healed, plant a little flag and be finished. Nine years later, I know better. Healing is messy and incredibly non-linear. It is learning and unlearning, losing and finding, grieving and laughing, moving forward and occasionally discovering that something you thought you dealt with five years ago has apparently been sitting quietly in the corner waiting for another turn. Again, rude.
That is probably why #forwardisapace means even more to me now than it did when I first started saying it. Forward hasn’t always looked impressive. Sometimes I ran. Sometimes I walked. Sometimes I crawled. There were plenty of times I was curled up on the bathroom floor because…well… it seemed safe. And there have been times when I had to go back and pick up a piece of myself I left somewhere along the way. I used to think that meant I was moving backward. Now I know better.
Nine years later, I have a lot more compassion for the woman who signed those papers. I don’t look back at her and wonder why she didn’t know more, do more or figure things out sooner. She knew what she knew at the time. She was doing the best she could with the information, strength and courage she had. She couldn’t have known what the next nine years would bring. Frankly, if someone had handed her the complete itinerary, she might have politely declined the trip.
Because she couldn’t have known about the losses that were coming. But she also couldn’t have known about the joy.
She didn’t know how much she would laugh again. She didn’t know how comfortable she would become in her own company or how fiercely she would learn to protect her peace. She didn’t know how many wonderful people she hadn’t met yet, how many places she hadn’t been, how many things she hadn’t tried, or how many times she would discover that she was capable of something she once thought she couldn’t do. Most of all, she didn’t know that someday she wouldn’t just survive a life she never planned. She would actually LIVE it and LIKE it!
Maybe that is the lesson of nine.
A beautiful life does not have to look anything like the life you originally planned. Joy and grief can exist in the same day, sometimes in the same damn hour. Happiness doesn’t mean you have stopped missing what you lost. Peace doesn’t require every story to have the ending you wanted. Freedom can come from things you chose to leave and, strangely enough, from things you never wanted to lose. And being okay doesn’t mean everything is okay. It just means you have learned that you can carry more than one truth at a time.
Eleven years ago, I couldn’t imagine this life. Nine years ago, I signed my name and walked away from one chapter without having the slightest idea what the next one would look like. Today, I still don’t know exactly what comes next. The difference is that I no longer need to.
There will be more loss because that is the price of loving people and having a life full enough to love things worth losing. There will be more grief. Edith will make sure of that. But there will also be more joy, more laughter, more love, more ridiculous stories, more mornings with the sun on my face, more people I haven’t met yet, more places I haven’t been and more pieces of myself I haven’t discovered.
So today I celebrate nine. Not because everything turned out the way I wanted it to. Good Lord, no. I celebrate because I am here. I am upright and above ground. Because I kept going. Because somewhere along the way I stopped trying to rebuild the life I thought I was supposed to have and started living the one that was actually mine.
If you had told me eleven years ago that this is what my life would look like today, I wouldn’t have believed you.
But here we are.
And I think I’ll stay awhile.

Peace,
#tutulady
#forwardisapace

Edith

Kristine Binder

I Finally Gave My Grief a Name.
I Call Her Edith.
When I first said those words out loud, they felt strange. Almost silly. Why would I name my grief?
The idea actually came from my therapist. She suggested that instead of thinking of grief as something that is me, I could think of it as someone who simply walks alongside me. Someone who has a name, a personality, and even human characteristics. She explained that if grief became a person instead of an emotion, I could begin to have a relationship with it. Some days it might come with me. Some days I might ask it to wait outside. Some days I might leave it at home entirely. The goal wasn’t to get rid of my grief. The goal was to stop believing that grief was who I was.
So, I named her Edith.
I don’t know exactly why I chose that name. Maybe it’s because Edith feels comfortable, like someone I’ve always known. Like a distant relative whose name I heard throughout my childhood but never really knew. Someone who was always there in family stories, yet remained a bit of a mystery. Over time, though, we’ve gotten to know each other. We’ve developed a relationship. It wasn’t exactly the relationship I would have chosen, but apparently Edith wasn’t asking for my opinion.
These days, Edith feels less like a stranger and more like an old sweater. She’s familiar. Comfortable. Soft around the edges. Sometimes I don’t even realize she’s wrapped herself around my shoulders until I stop and notice she’s there. Other days, she sits quietly in the corner, barely asking for my attention at all. She’s old-fashioned, quiet, and wise. She doesn’t demand attention, but she’s never very far away. She also has absolutely no concept of appropriate timing. She’s shown up in the grocery store because I walked past my dad’s favorite cookies, in the middle of a bookstore because I found one I wanted to tell him about, and at the beach because a sunset reminded me of my mom. I’ve gently suggested she work on her timing. She’s gently ignored me.
Some mornings Edith greets me before my feet hit the floor. She reminds me that my parents aren’t here to answer the phone and Kelly isn’t going to respond to my text. She sits beside me when I read a book I want to tell my dad about, catch the scent of my mom’s perfume on an old sweater, or hear a song Kelly loved. She also has impeccable timing if I’m wearing mascara. Other days, she’s barely noticeable. She lets me laugh with friends, lose myself in a good book, or watch a sunset without whispering in my ear. She’s still there—I know she is—but she gives me room to breathe and the space to experience joy without guilt. On those days, I like to imagine she’s off having coffee with someone else’s grief.
Giving my grief a name didn’t make it disappear. It made it understandable.
Before Edith, grief felt like an unpredictable wave crashing over me without warning. Now I recognize her. I can say, “Edith is having a hard day today,” instead of believing that I am falling apart. That small shift has changed more than I ever imagined.
Instead of fighting my grief, I can become curious about it. What does Edith need today? Sometimes she needs me to cry. Sometimes she needs me to tell another story about my parents because speaking their names keeps them close. Some days she wants me to read old messages from Kelly. Sometimes she simply wants to sit quietly beside me while I drink my morning coffee. She’s actually pretty low-maintenance. Coffee, a good cry, and the occasional old voicemail seem to keep her happy.
And sometimes, she doesn’t need to come with me at all.
There are days when I leave Edith at home. Not because I love the people I’ve lost any less. Not because I’ve forgotten them or “moved on.” But because grief doesn’t have to accompany me to every lunch with friends, every outing, every concert, or every joyful moment. She’ll still be there when I get home, and somehow I think she understands.
I’ve learned it’s healthy for us to spend a little time apart. Every relationship needs boundaries, right? Besides, if Edith came to every dinner, beach day, and concert, we’d probably both be exhausted. A little space is good for us. And truthfully, she’s gotten much better about letting me enjoy the happy moments before quietly reminding me that love and grief have always shared the same heart.
Perhaps that’s the greatest gift of naming her. I no longer see grief as something that happened to me or something I have to carry alone. I see her as a companion who arrived because love came first.
Edith only exists because my people existed. She walks beside me because my parents loved me. Because Kelly loved me. Because so many others left fingerprints on my heart that time could never erase. The depth of my grief is simply a reflection of the depth of my love. I wouldn’t know Edith if I hadn’t first known them.
If I had my druthers, I never would have chosen to meet her. If I had the choice, I’d trade every lesson she’s taught me for one more call, one more hug, one more ordinary day with the people I miss. But since she’s here, we’ve learned how to be together. Like every long-term relationship, we’ve found our rhythm. She reminds me to slow down and remember. I remind her that it’s okay for me to laugh, to travel, to fall in love with life again. We’ve discovered that there is room for both joy and sorrow, and neither one has to cancel out the other.
I’ve come to believe that grief isn’t the opposite of love. It’s love searching for somewhere to go. My love for my people doesn’t simply disappear. It still exists. It still needs somewhere to live. For me, it walks beside me. It bears the name Edith.
Maybe that’s why naming her has been so healing. It hasn’t made the grief smaller, and it certainly hasn’t made me miss my people any less. But it has reminded me that grief is not a sign that something is wrong. It’s evidence that I loved deeply and was loved in return.
We didn’t choose each other, Edith and I. But after spending this much time together, it seemed only right that we learned each other’s names.
The truth is, neither of us is going anywhere.
So we’ve learned to be together. We’ve learned each other’s rhythms. We’ve learned when to hold on a little tighter and when to give each other some space. And somewhere along the way, I stopped wishing she would disappear and started appreciating why she has become a part of my life.
Because without Edith, I don’t know that I would fully understand the depth of the love I was so fortunate to experience. She’s no longer just my grief. She’s become the keeper of my memories, the guardian of my love, and the gentle reminder that the people who shaped my life are still shaping my heart.
So now I’m curious…
If you gave your grief a name, what would it be? Or maybe it isn’t grief at all. Maybe it’s anxiety. Fear. Hope. Joy. Regret. Courage.
What would happen if, instead of trying to outrun that feeling, you invited it to sit beside you long enough to understand why it came? Sometimes the feelings we spend the most energy resisting are simply asking to be acknowledged.
Maybe they deserve a name.

Peace,
#tutulady
#forwardisapace

Routes

Kristine Binder
I needed to remember that even though the people are gone, the stories are still here. The memories are still alive inside me.

There are some drives that are more than just getting from one place to another. Some roads carry memories in the pavement. Yesterday, without realizing it, I took one of those drives.
I don’t believe in coincidences. I never have. I think things show up when we need them, even if we don’t understand why at first.
Yesterday I had to take my fur-baby to the vet because he’s been limping again. The same vet who did his surgeries years ago. I had never been to this office which meant an hour drive each way, so I plugged the address into my navigation app and off we went.
What I didn’t expect was that the route would take me straight through pieces of my life I haven’t visited in years. Past the community college where I earned summer credits. Past the church where I got married. Past the YMCA where I took swimming lessons as a little girl.
Road after road that I hadn’t driven in forever somehow came back like muscle memory. Every turn familiar. Every landmark holding a story. And honestly? It was exactly what my heart needed.
At the vet, we waited for what felt like forever. Once everything was cleared and I was told it was age and arthritis….just like his momma….the vet and I were talking afterward, I could feel myself sitting right on the edge of tears the entire time. I told him I know my dog is getting older. I know that day will come someday. But not now. Please not now. And then I cried.
I told him how I recently lost both my parents and how strangely cathartic this drive had been for me. He asked where I grew up and I told him. Turns out he lives in that same small town now.
Ten years. I’ve been going to this vet for over ten years and I’m just finding this out now? Such a small world.
As I left, my GPS routed me home a different way and about a block from the vet was the marine store where my family spent so much time when I was growing up. Boats. Water skis. Snow skis. Equipment lined up everywhere. So many Saturdays with my dad walking through those aisles. So many summers built around the water. So many winters built around the snow.
And in that moment I wanted so badly to tell someone those stories. To laugh about them with someone who remembered. But the people who shared those memories with me are gone from my life now. Those memories belong only to me. That realization is both beautiful and heartbreaking.
As I drove, Grateful Dead playing through my speakers, I found myself smiling at every little thing I remembered. Each memory healing something in me. Tiny stitches closing up parts of a broken heart. It’s funny how grief works.
When your parents die, the good and the bad goes with them. They are the only people who really knew you from day one. The only people who knew every version of you. Every phase. Every family story. Every triumph and heartbreak and embarrassing moment and inside joke. And then suddenly that connection is gone. And sometimes when parents go, the connection to siblings and extended family changes too. The glue that held everyone together is gone. The person who softened tensions, organized holidays, insisted people stay connected, covered the cracks… they’re no longer here.
That grief is its own kind of loss too. The grieving of it all is layered. But like I said, I don’t believe in coincidences. I think those roads found me yesterday for a reason. I think my soul needed familiar places. Familiar turns. Familiar memories. I needed to remember that even though the people are gone, the stories are still here. The memories are still alive inside me. I carry the family lore now. I carry the history. I carry them.
And somehow that feels both unbearably heavy and completely priceless at the same time.

Peace,
#tutulady
#forwardisapace

Outside

Kristine Binder

I try to get outside every single day. To walk, to run, to move my body in some way, even when the weather is doing everything it can to convince me otherwise. Extreme heat, biting cold, wind that feels personal, humidity that is oppressive, it does not always make it easy, but I go anyway. Some days it is a long walk, some days it is shorter, and lately, if I am being honest, there is more walking than running as my body gently reminds me that I am not in my 50s anymore. And that is fine. I am still moving. I am still showing up.
People often ask why I am so consistent about it, and the answer is actually pretty simple. When I am outside, I am not distracted. Most days I do not listen to music, I am not on a call, and I am not catching up on a podcast or a book. I am just there, listening to the world. The birds, the cars passing by, kids playing somewhere in the distance, the ordinary sounds of a neighborhood going about its day. There is something grounding about it, something that pulls me out of my own head and places me back into the present.
Being outside forces me to look up. To look around. To notice.
And when I notice, I see things I might have otherwise missed. Small things, but meaningful ones. A flag fluttering in the wind. New buds coming up. The kind of details that are easy to overlook when life feels heavy or rushed. But when I slow down enough to see them, they feel like little reminders that there is still beauty here, still joy, still life happening all around me.
Yesterday, it was a hawk and a cardinal.
The hawk flew past me as I walked down the sidewalk, close enough to feel like a moment meant just for me. And then there was the cardinal. I could hear him for blocks before I ever saw him, that distinct call cutting through everything else. I knew he was there, so I kept looking, scanning the trees until I finally found him perched at the very top, like he had been waiting for me to notice.
The moment I did, and I took a picture, he stopped singing.
It felt almost intentional, like his job was simply to get my attention.
I kept walking for a few more blocks, and then I heard another one. Different tree, same song. Again, I looked up, found him, and again, as soon as I saw him, he stopped.
Coincidence, maybe. But it didn’t feel like one.
Because for me, the cardinal is not just a bird.
It is a constant reminder of my dad.
It is a reminder that he is still with me, that he is watching me, that somehow, in ways I cannot fully explain, he is still part of my life. And every time I hear that call before I see him, it feels like a gentle nudge. Like he is reminding me that if I slow down, if I listen, he will guide me.
I look for signs everywhere now. I move through my day asking the universe, sometimes quietly and sometimes not so quietly, to show me that my people are still with me. And I see them. In hearts that appear in unexpected places, in cardinals, in hawks, in flowers that seem a little too perfectly placed to be random. I choose to believe those moments are not accidents. I choose to believe they are connection.
But I also know this, I would miss all of it if I stayed inside.
Being outside clears something inside of me. With every inhale and exhale, something shifts. Something loosens. Something that has been sitting heavy inside my body finds a little more space to move and be removed.
Getting outside and moving my body during my divorce saved me. And that is not an exaggeration. It saved the fragile pieces of my mental health that were barely holding on at the time. It gave me somewhere to put the thoughts, the emotions, the questions that had nowhere else to go.
Over the past two years, while caring for my parents, it saved me again. In the middle of responsibility, stress, and anticipatory grief, those walks became a lifeline. A place where I could breathe, even if just for a little while. And now, in this new and different season of grief, I can feel it doing the same thing once more. It is helping me find my way back to myself, slowly, quietly, one step at a time.
There is something about being outside, about breathing in fresh air and feeling the elements against my skin, that makes me feel more alive than almost anything else. It reminds me that my body is still here, still capable, still moving forward even when my heart feels heavy.
It does not fix everything.
But it softens things.
And sometimes, that is enough.

Peace,
#tutulady
#forwardisapace

Stillness

Kristine Binder

As a 60th birthday gift to myself, I joined a gym. This may not sound like a particularly profound milestone, but for me it felt like a quiet act of defiance against a year that had taken more out of me than I expected. I told myself that no matter what else life threw my way, this would be something I did for me. And somewhat to my own surprise, I have not missed a single day since I started. Every. Single. Day. Some days I work out harder than others. Some days it’s cardio, some days it’s weights, and some days the workout is generous enough to be described as “movement.” But I show up. Consistency, it turns out, is sometimes more important than intensity.
The one part of the routine I never skip is the sauna. Fifteen to twenty minutes in that heat feels like something is leaving my body that has been stuck there for too long. I’m sure there are impressive physiological explanations for why this is good for me, and I’m happy to claim all the health benefits experts talk about. But what I notice most are the mental ones. Sitting in that heat, sweating out the day, feels like a release valve for the parts of grief and stress that quietly accumulate in the body. Apparently grief is not only emotional, it is also very committed to setting up residence in my shoulders.
Most of my days are anything but quiet. Teaching means I am “on” from the moment I walk into the building. Decisions, conversations, explanations, encouragement, redirection…lather, rinse and repeat. My brain rarely gets a break. After school there are more conversations, more responsibilities, and the drive home is usually spent catching up with friends or returning calls that have been waiting patiently for my attention. My life is full of people, which is a blessing I do not take lightly, but it also means that stillness is not something that naturally appears in my day.
Then I get to the gym and something shifts.
No one there knows me. No one knows my story or the things I am carrying. No one knows about my grief, my pride, my resilience, or the complicated chapters that have brought me to this moment. To them I am simply another person on a treadmill or lifting a weight or quietly existing in the corner of the sauna. I am just taking up space, which turns out to be incredibly freeing.
It is the same now when I walk or run. I put my phone on do not disturb and go. No one is asking questions, no one needs answers, and no one expects anything from me. It was never that way before until now. I do not have to explain myself or justify my emotions or revisit demons I am not particularly interested in entertaining that day. It is just me and my thoughts. The ones I choose to engage with and the ones that show up uninvited, which…if we are being honest… is how most thoughts operate anyway.
Recently I have also attended a few meditation sessions, which has been an interesting development for someone whose mind has historically operated like a browser with 47 tabs open at once. I learned about the “monkey mind,” the restless mental chatter that hops from one thought to another without ever fully settling. Sitting in stillness does not come naturally to me. In fact, the first time I tried it, my brain seemed determined to remind me of everything from my grocery list I forgot to buy in 2007.
But something interesting happened afterward. When the meditation ended, I felt an immense sense of peace, followed by a kind of exhaustion that feels strangely familiar. It is the same tiredness you feel after running a long race. Apparently, sitting still with your thoughts can be just as demanding as running a marathon—who knew?
Grief has changed the rhythm of my life in ways I am still learning to understand. There is a natural tension in being human between belonging and solitude. We need connection, community, laughter, and the comfort of knowing someone else is walking beside us. But we also need solitude. We need quiet spaces where we can sit with our thoughts and make sense of the emotions that don’t always behave politely enough to appear on a convenient schedule.
When grief enters your life, that rhythm becomes exaggerated. Some days you crave the presence of other people because being alone feels like standing in an echo chamber of sadness. Other days even the smallest interaction feels overwhelming, and what you want most is silence. The pendulum swings back and forth between connection and solitude, and learning to follow that rhythm becomes part of the work of healing.
The truth is that much of grief is experienced alone. In those quiet hours, when the world is not asking anything of us, we sit with loss and slowly begin the difficult work of understanding it. In that stillness, sorrow begins to transform. It becomes deeper, more complex, and eventually…. if we allow it…. something that can expand our capacity for compassion.
My therapist and others who have gently guided me through this season keep telling me the same thing: the answers I am searching for will come in the stillness.
This is mildly inconvenient advice for someone who was raised to believe that movement equals progress and productivity equals worth. I was conditioned to stay busy, stay useful, and stay in motion. Rest was seen as weakness and sitting still was NEVER an option. If you were tired, you probably just needed to work harder. If you were struggling, the solution was to keep going in order to outrun it.
Stillness was never presented or accepted as an option.
So learning to sit quietly with my thoughts has become its own kind of practice. I am learning that movement does not always have to be loud or fast to count. Sometimes movement is subtle. Sometimes it is simply the act of allowing yourself to feel something instead of outrunning it.
Either way, I am worthy.
Either way, I am doing enough.
So these days I find myself gravitating toward the quiet places more often. The sauna. The treadmill. A long walk where no one knows my name and no one needs anything from me. No music, no books, no phone calls—just the noise of my own brain, which, depending on the day, can be the loudest sound in the world.
Learning to listen to that noise…. and eventually quiet it…. is a skill I am still developing.
Slowly.
And I am beginning to suspect that slowly might be exactly the pace that grief requires.

Peace,
#tutulady
#forwardisapace