6 Months of Grief Project: Day 47

Full Moon Altar

This is Day 47 of my #6MonthsOfGrief Project. To learn more about this practice, feel free to visit Day One, where I explain this project in more detail.

Last night was the Full Moon. This moon has been called the Fish Moon, the Sleepy Moon, the Windy Moon, the Big Famine Moon, the Moon When Eyes Are Sore from Bright Snow, the Moon of Winds, the Chaste Moon, the Death Moon, the Full Crow Moon (when the cawing of crows signaled the end of winter), the Full Crust Moon, the Full Sap Moon (marking the time of tapping maple trees), the Lenten Moon (last full Moon of winter), the Moose Hunter Moon, the Catching Fish Moon, the Snow Crust Moon, the Moon When Frost Sparkles in the Sun, the Sore Eye Moon, the Cottonball Moon, the Eagle Moon, Whispering Wind Moon, the Crane Moon & the Worm Moon (from the temperature beginning to warm and the ground beginning to thaw, which brings earthworm casts, heralding the return of the robins).

One of my best friends is staying with me for a week and she has been helping me so much with all the strange widow chores that still need to be done, like re-arranging and organizing the kitchen to a system that I like (instead of how my husband wanted things set up) and figuring out if I really want a worm farm in my life. Last night, she roasted us a chicken and we ate by candlelight. We had bigger plans for a Full Moon ritual, but Widow Management is exhausting and we ended up watching a Girls marathon instead, and that's just fine.

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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 see you tomorrow.