Navigating Fall

I haven’t blogged in a while and I miss it. I feel like it’s a muscle that I’ve allowed to atrophy and even now, I’m struggling to find the words to type.

October is a rough month. It’s my favorite month and my least favorite at the same time. Fall break is going to be a mix of emotions. October 10th marks what would have been Bryan‘s 25th double lung transplant which bought him another 21 years – long enough to watch his kids grow up and graduate, long enough for us to meet and have a few years together.

October 20th marks what would have been our 4th wedding anniversary. Every year, I try to do something that I think we would have done together if he were still alive. This year, I’m traveling with a couple of friends down to Tulane to see the Memphis Tigers play. It’ll be my first time in New Orleans since I was pregnant with kiddo (so you can imagine my first full New Orleans experience wasn’t quite the same) so it’ll be a super-fun time and a super-emotional one.

It’s been a rough few weeks. I’m learning a new environment, trying to find my way and stumbling quite a bit along the educational path. Education is a rewarding and cut-throat all at the same time. I have to admit that I don’t navigate the cut-throat part well, but I’m going to have to learn in order to survive and do what my heart has been asking me to do. I’ve got a handful of education friends who have been absolutely wonderful and supportive – inside the school as well as outside of it – but I miss my biggest cheerleader. I would have left school today and he would have been ready to tell me something funny, take me out for dinner and drinks, we would have gotten tipsy and silly, I would have been able to vent, he would have been willing to listen, and at the end of the night I would have felt tons better and ready to face another week.

But I have friends – friends who allow me to hang around them, text them when I need to, message them on FB, Instagram, and Snapchat. And those friends know who they are. What they may not know is just how much I cherish them and appreciate their love, support, and patience throughout all of this. I guess I was able to find the words after all.