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THE THREE-PART SECRET OF GETTING GOOD AT ANYTHING – YES, ANYTHING (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, WRITING)

How do people get good at things? Especially, those people who are astoundingly good — how on earth do they get that way? No matter who your favorite musicians are (or writers, athletes, actors, artists, cooks), , you can bet they do three things. These are things that anyone, who is good at anything, does, regardless of […]

DOES IT GET EASIER? YES. DO YOU GET OVER IT? NO.

By Crescent Dragonwagon 8 Comments

I would like to tell you, dear fellow members of the Club No One Wants to Join, especially those younger to widowhood than I am, that it gets easier over time. And I can. For it does. It gets easier over time. I would also, so very much, like not to tell you that you […]

GRIEF’S LOVE-LANGUAGE

By Crescent Dragonwagon 7 Comments

That last Thursday in November, I had been at Miller Williams‘ sixth or eighth Survey of Western Poetry class, which I was auditing at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.I’d drive over each Thursday — it was about an hour from Eureka Springs — immerse myself in Miller’s world, do any Fayetteville errands that I […]

INSTEAD OF “HEALING”, GRIEVING TRUTHFULLY

By Crescent Dragonwagon 1 Comment

How do we travel through widowhood and grief towards whatever the next phase of our life will be if, as we said last week, “healing” doesn’t work as a model? And let’s look at a couple of other commonly used phrases that also don’t apply; “getting over it,” and “closure.” How can you “get over” […]

WHY YOU CAN’T “HEAL” WIDOWHOOD GRIEF

By Crescent Dragonwagon 7 Comments

Most of us, before widowhood was thrust upon us, gave little thought to what that state would actually be like. And when and if we did try to conceive of it, most of us got it wrong. ” … In the version of grief we imagine ( before we are widowed),” writes Joan Didion in […]

WIDOW-WISDOM, & THE SARAN WRAP COVERED HEART

By Crescent Dragonwagon 6 Comments

In the little Arkansas town (population, then, just under 2000) in which Ned and I had lived, everybody did not exactly know each other. But we certainly knew about each other. Maybe two years after Ned’s death, still deeply bereft, I ran into Freddy. We were friends, though not close. He was someone I knew […]

A WIDOW IS A REMINDER: IT COULD HAPPEN TO ME

By Crescent Dragonwagon 11 Comments

“What’s on your mind this morning?” Facebook asked me cheerily last week. As it does daily, to any user who opens it before noon. That morning happened to be September 10th, 2017. What was on my mind? Quite a bit. It was the day before the 16th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks. It was the […]

A “SUICIDE-WIDOW” CONSIDERS THE UNTHINKABLE, ON A STRIPED COUCH

By Crescent Dragonwagon 11 Comments

I have a new cat. New to me, that is; she is actually 14 years old. She belonged to my friend Rupa, who died on the 4th of July this year. Intelligent, affectionate, and calm — as was Rupa herself, a glowing soul — Nomah quickly made her way into my heart. To the extent […]