6 Months of Grief Project: Day 37

Stewed

This is Day 37 of my #6MonthsOfGrief Project. To learn more about this practice, feel free to visit Day One, where I explain this project in more detail.

My husband was a Giant Bear Powerlifter, who needed lots and lots of food to fuel his big, strong body. Living with him for 12 years, meant that I learned how to cook giant quantities of food. There were also rarely leftovers in our house and our monthly grocery bill was astronomical, since we both had pretty severe food allergies that required us to shop at the more expensive grocery stores.

Since he's been gone, I seem to be having a very difficult time cooking for one person. I have volumes of leftovers, which means I end up eating stews for three or four days straight. Since I am allergic to most plastics, my refrigerator has become a wonderland of glass mason jars filled with all sorts of leftover food. 

It's so lonely to cook for one. Those mason jars make me kind of sad, but they are also really beautiful, which is why I photographed one on my little kitchen altar, above the sink. I'm also starting a full-time job soon, and I'm sure I'll be grateful for all those leftovers, since they can be taken as lunches.

PLEASE NOTE: I'm about to leave on a trip to Big Sur, and the Internet there is spotty at best, so you may not see any posts from me for about a week. If this happens, please know that I'm okay and will be back soon. The stickler for perfection in me is very disturbed that I won't be able to make a daily post and I may still find a way to do it, but if I do not, at least you know why. I will of course, still be making an image a day, as part of this practice.

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I am very aware that this project can bring up a lot around yours or other's grief and loss, I will always follow every post with some online grief support resources that have helped me. Please feel free to let me know of online support that you have found healing in your grief, as well:

Art with Grief:

• Photographer [Sarah Treanor] Takes Moving Self-Portraits to Cope with Her Fiance's Death by Jillian Wong
• When the Fall Comes, a film about Grief by Adriana Marchione
• Self-Portraits: Expressing Emotion Through Art on What's Your Grief?
• The Hard Romance of Grief by Mark Liebenow
• The poetry of John O’Donohue

Resources for Widows:

• Camp Widow

• Soaring Spirits International

Living with Grief Resources:

• Modern Loss's excellent resource list
• Grief Bibliography on Grief Healing

• Teresa “TL” Bruce's What to Say When Someone Dies
• They Brought Cookies: For A New Widow, Empathy Eases Death's Pain by Ann Finkbeiner on NPR
• A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit

• Megan Devine’s Refuge in Grief

• The Geography of Sorrow: Francis Weller on Navigating Our Loses, interviewed by Tim McKee in Sun Magazine

• How to Be a Friend in Deed by Bruce Feiler in the New York Times

• 12 Things to Know About the First Year of Grieving Someone You Can’t Live Without by Laurie Costanza in Elephant Magazine

And remember, I am sharing this project on a variety of platforms, including my Instagram, Twitter, & Facebook feeds, as well as my Pinterest page on Grief. I use the hashtag #6MonthsOfGrief, so it can easily be found on any platform. Please share this project with anyone you think might need it.

Thank you, and (hopefully) see you tomorrow.