January 1st, 2020

          A year ago, four months after my husband experienced his physical death, I started writing solely for the purpose of posting on Facebook for family, friends and acquaintances. I had a strong desire to not only make sure that his Facebook page didn’t turn into a graveyard of RIP’s but to also take care of him by taking care of those who loved him and whom he loved.

          My intention, as his wife and keeper of the intimate knowledge of who he was over the past 15 years, was to give people something to hold on to, something to help them process his life and his death. It was also my intention to take care of those he loved by letting them know that our daughter and I were ok, so that they could at least remove one layer of alarm that they may have had around his sudden exit.

          As fate had it, I was surrounded by a group of women, whom I barely knew, when I received the news of his passing. In the days after we shared the traumatic event, the friend requests started coming in and neither I nor my new acquaintances knew what was about to transpire in their newsfeed. Over the coming year, they not only learned about our love story but were given the opportunity to witness a journey that was both raw and healing. Their reactions to my words revealed to me that there was a higher purpose to my social media posts and their gentle encouragement showed me what I now know I must do with my writing.

          If you would have told me a year ago that I was going to write a book, I would have thought you had the wrong person. It had never crossed my mind that I would write anything longer than a paragraph on Facebook or an assignment for a class, but as I started to share my thoughts and publicly mourn my husband, that’s exactly what I ended up doing. 

          After I made the last post of the year, I printed out everything I had written to start the process of taking my work and formally writing a book. Then out of the blue, I was contacted by a gentleman who I hadn’t seen since I was a teenager. He was in town for a quick visit from Edmonton and had me on his list of people to see. Honoured that he would take time out of his schedule to visit me, we went out for a quick cup of coffee and a chat. He started our conversation by telling me that the words I wrote on Facebook created conversations between him and his wife, and then between them and others, that was deep and meaningful. The effect of my writing was so profound in their life that he had to tell me in person.

          As a professional writer, he was also more aware of what I was doing with my writing than I was and said one sentence that made my writing journey even more clear.  He said, “The writing process is just as important as the actual product.” It wasn’t only what I had to say, but the process of getting those words and the events that took place because of it, that was what made my work valuable. Up until then, I thought that the value in my writing was the actual social media posts, but once I stepped back to look at the transformation that occurred, it was easy to see that it was the metamorphosis that I had undergone over the past year in my writing and within myself that was the true story.

          Part of our conversation that day was about starting this blog. It was never my intention to put my writing in such a vulnerable place and it still feels overwhelming and frightening to put this out into the unfiltered public. But I know it’s what I must do, because out of the blue, a couple of days after I quickly dismissed the idea of starting a blog, another person, who I don’t have contact with, suggested the same thing. 

          Just like this book has been asking to be written, so is this blog, and I not only feel a sense of responsibility to make this happen but that this is why I am here in this lifetime and have the honour of having this story to tell.

          So I invite you to follow along with me over the next year while I repost my Facebook posts, along with a little more context around what was happening behind the scenes at the time that I posted them. Please bear in mind that each post was written within a few days or even hours and was never intended to represent a completely polished version. They were designed to be short at first and written with a Facebook audience in mind, and as I gained more confidence that people wanted to read what I had to say and allowed myself to say what I really wanted to, the writing grew in depth and meaning.

          I look forward to hearing how our story has also impacted your life, the way it has impacted the lives of our Facebook audience.

Sincerely,