When Holidays Haunt Us With Empty Chairs, Remember This:

“A chair is still a chair, even when there’s no one sitting there …” An empty chair, an approaching holiday, tosses us into a desperate wilderness without a map. And it’s messy off the map, no matter what age — this year, particularly so.

This post is for you, the one who is holding your breath a little too tightly to your heart because this is the season when that chair becomes so much more than a chair — and you feel like you are not going to make it through. You, covering up, yet cracked wide open. I see you.

I see your bravery, navigating through the wilderness of loss. I want to remind you – to remember with you – that this wilderness is not so desperate a place when we recognize that we are the embodied sum of our experiences with love.

When Pink is Blue on Valentine’s Day. A Recipe for Love.

Has Valentine’s Day found you alone – or alone in a relationship? (Yes, there is such a creature.) What do you do when the “d” in Valentine’s Day cozies up with despair or disappointment while chocolates, flowers, and cards fly by you in the checkout line – yet there are none to greet you at home?

At its core, Valentine’s Day is about love, and taking pause to delight in displays of love that express appreciation for a special someone in our life. If you explore the history of how Valentine’s Day evolved, however, you might be a little surprised that it made it through as the ritual of love we recognize today. Stories about exploitation and enticement of the masses for political and religious gain mingle with fertility rites and names pulled out of village-mating jars. Wooing, courtship, and acts of appreciation didn’t enter the picture until much later.

Based on all that, the relationship status of Valentine’s Day would have to read, “It’s complicated.” Not unlike many of the relationships we find ourselves in and out of, huh? No wonder it’s a day of delight and dread in so many lives. This is love’s challenge – given time and human involvement.

Where am I going with this?

Hitting Pause. Nurturing Essentials.

What do you cherish? What delights you and drives you to devotion? I don’t want to know what you like. What do you cherish?

Heading into my third holiday season after Ray’s transition, I cherish that you will read on, and indulge me in savoring a sweet memory from our courtship days while you search your own heart for that which you cherish.

Honeymoon Photo Booth Fun 1975

I was working in an art studio in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan when Ray and I met. He’d returned to Detroit, after living seven years in New York City, and had been back only a few weeks when we went on our first date. The city had burned him out – he thought – but he was coming back to find me. We just didn’t know it yet.

I was 20. He was 28. He asked me to marry him, one month later. There was no doubt in my heart that YES was the only answer. Within seven weeks, we were married.