Tag: love

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

Figureoutable

Kristine Binder

I worry. A lot.

My therapist has a word for it: catastrophizing. I like to think of it as being exceptionally prepared for disasters that will probably never happen.
If there is a possible outcome, my brain has a remarkable ability to skip over the likely ones and head straight for the worst-case scenario. I can take a simple uncertainty and turn it into a full-blown disaster movie (ever seen Sharnado?!) complete with alternate endings, contingency plans, a backup contingency plan, and a healthy dose of anxiety. Give me an unanswered email and I can have us bankrupt, homeless, and living under a bridge before lunch.
The truth is that I have spent years believing that if I worry enough, think hard enough, or plan far enough ahead, I can somehow prevent bad things from happening. Lime I have some sort of superpower for situational control. 
The reality is that worrying has never prevented a single thing. In fact, if I am being completely honest, most of the things I wasted countless hours worrying about never happened at all. My anxiety has predicted approximately 10,432 disasters over the years, and its batting average is not great. For something that sounds so convincing in the moment, it has a surprisingly poor track record.
What struck me recently was the realization that if I were to make a list of everything I have worried about throughout my life, it would be incredibly long. There would be relationships, jobs, finances, family issues, health concerns, moves, losses, and countless situations where I had absolutely no idea how things were going to work out. There were moments when I was convinced I would never get over something, never find an answer, never recover from a loss, or never know what to do next. At the time, those fears felt very real and very overwhelming.
Yet when I look back, every one of those situations eventually became part of my history instead of my future. Some of them resolved themselves. Some of them turned out differently than I expected. Some of them were every bit as difficult as I feared they would be. But every single one of them moved from being an uncertainty to being an experience that I survived. Not only did I survive them, but I learned from them, adapted to them, and carried those lessons forward into whatever came next.
I think that is the part I forget when I am in the middle of worrying. I focus so much on the possibility that something could go wrong that I forget the evidence that has been sitting right in front of me for sixty years. I have a lifetime of proof that I am capable. I have faced challenges I never anticipated, losses I never wanted, and circumstances I certainly would not have chosen. Somehow, every time, I found a way through. It may not have been pretty. It may not have been the path I expected. It may have involved tears, frustration, and more than a few sleepless nights, but I found a way.
As I have gotten older, I can also see that many of the experiences I would never have chosen for myself ended up teaching me exactly what I needed to know. The twists and turns that seemed unfair at the time often carried lessons, wisdom, strength, and perspective that I would not have gained any other way. Looking back, I can see how those experiences shaped me into the person I am today. Had things unfolded differently, I would be a different person with a different understanding of the world.
I am not naïve enough to think I will stop catastrophizing overnight. After all, I have had decades of practice,  have become quite skilled at it and should add it to my resume. What I am trying to do, however, is remember the evidence. The evidence tells me that most of the things I worry about never happen. The evidence tells me that when difficult things do happen, I am capable of handling them. The evidence tells me that I have a remarkably good track record of figuring things out, even when I am convinced that I won’t.
Perhaps that is the lesson I need to carry with me. Instead of putting all my faith in the stories my anxiety creates about the future, maybe I should put a little more faith in the woman who has already navigated every challenge life has placed in front of her. I need to remain grounded in the present reality of doing ‘the next right thing,’ even if I am not 100%sure what that is at the moment, I need to trust myself and my gut. If my past has taught me anything, it is that no matter how uncertain the road ahead may seem, I have always managed to find my way forward. No amount of worrying has ever been as powerful as my ability to adapt, learn, and keep moving forward.
And if sixty years of evidence have taught me anything, it’s this: every dinged-up, messy, complicated thing has eventually been figureoutable.

Peace,
#tutulady
#forwardisapace

Live

Kristine Binder
The people we love never really stop teaching us.

Two years ago, my friend Kelly shared these words with me. At the time, they felt like a reminder to live fully, to take chances, to say yes to life, and to not spend my days simply existing.
Today, I read them differently.
Kelly was so prophetic. She died in 2025 and yet somehow, she is still teaching me. Encouraging me to “do the next right thing…”
She taught me that life is not measured by the number of years we are given but by how deeply we love, how fiercely we show up, and how willing we are to embrace the messy, beautiful, uncertain parts of being human.
When I think of Kelly, I don’t think of someone who died slowly. I think of someone who lived. Someone who laughed, loved, cared deeply, and left fingerprints on the hearts of the people lucky enough to know her.
There are days I still want to pick up the phone and tell her something. Days something happens and I think, “I can’t wait to tell Kelly.” Days when I desperately need her wisdom (and humor). Days when I miss her so deeply it catches me off guard.
But then I remember that the people we love never really stop teaching us. Their lessons live on in the choices we make, the risks we take, the kindness we offer, and the way we continue forward carrying a piece of them with us.
So today, as I share these words again, I am thinking of Kelly.
Thank you, my friend, for the reminder to live now. To be curious. To be brave. To wear the bright colors. To chase the dream. To choose joy when I can. Thank you again for the stark reminder to live my life now. I do not want to die slowly. I want to go out kicking and screaming in a cloud of glitter with the devil chasing me down!
I miss you deeply. And am forever grateful that you are still teaching me.
Love your people….. and live every day.

You start dying slowly ;
if you do not travel,
if you do not read,
If you do not listen to the sounds of life,
If you do not appreciate yourself.
You start dying slowly :
When you kill your self-esteem,
You start dying slowly ;
If you become a slave of your habits,
Walking everyday on the same paths…
If you do not change your routine,
If you do not wear different colours
Or you do not speak to those you don’t know.
You start dying slowly :
If you avoid to feel passion
And their turbulent emotions;
Those which make your eyes glisten
And your heart beat fast.
You start dying slowly :
If you do not risk what is safe for the uncertain
If you do not go after a dream
If you do not allow yourself
At least once in your lifetime
To run away from sensible advice
Don’t let yourself die slowly
Do not forget to be happy!

Pablo Neruda
Chilean poet who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971

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