It's that wonderful time of year

Here is Skye, otherwise known as Momma-Skye these days. Excitement abounds in the Cottage as the puppies' due date approaches!! We are 11 days away, and counting, while nesting and eating extra food and resting lots.

today is a grieving day

It's hard to say what triggers the great sadness. A memory, a smell, seasons, life events, an aching in the soul...it just happens, and then the tears are there, or sometimes a smile, but mostly tears right now.

I've never felt this before, this overwhelming sense of loss. Life has been a certain way for 29 years with shifts here and there, but there have been constants. And now those constants are withdrawn, they're away from me, changed now and forever in a course of new history.

I'm mourning my losses and grieving when my heart says to grieve.

I don't know why my heart chose Thursday, Nov. 15 as a grieving day, but it did, just like it chose Wednesday night, Nov. 14, and Saturday, Nov. 10 and Sunday, Nov. 11. 

"Holly, why are you crying? Are you OK?"
"I'm just sad. Today is a crying day."

"Will it always feel this way? I can't stop crying. I'm crying just talking about crying."
"It sounds like you just need to cry."

The grief is greedy today. 

I have a visual of my heart, it came to me Saturday night, Nov. 10.
It's bleeding and open, swollen and raw. It's not pretty; it's no wonder I'm crying.
The wound has been cleaned, scrubbed, it's not infected. It's been stuffed with gauze and laced loosely shut, easily reopened and accessible to more cleaning, scrubbing, disinfectant.
It's healing, but painfully slow.

Everyone grieves differently. Give yourself the freedom to find your way in your grief-journey.
I've said that before to friends, and it's true.

Grieve, brave heart, how you must.

Book Review: Reflected in You

The second in Sylvia Day's Crossfire series, Reflected in You is a mixture of erotica, mystery and intrigue. For the intellectual reader who tires of a disjointed plot that connects one sex scene to another, this series might be what you're looking for. There's enough mystery and plot to keep the reader engaged, and the erotica could be seen as a bonus.

The opening chapters are slow-paced, the typical introduction to the middle child of a series, but once the plot is developed and the characters defined, it takes off in mystery-like fashion. 

To join the discussion, http://www.blogher.com/bookclub/now-reading-reflected-you.

"I was compensated for this BlogHer Book Club review but all opinions expressed are my own."