Remember Julie Andrews singing, “a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down…” in Mary Poppins?
Looking for #tinylittlejoys (TLJ) daily with @mc.phd over on Instagram, and TLJ seekers/new friends, this year has proven that finding even the tiniest little joy every day, especially on the hard days, helps lift the ‘hard’ just a little bit. Over time it becomes a game changer you will never give up.
When you’ve walked your husband to Heaven’s gates, had to raise your children alone, battled cancer, thought you could never possibly be happy again because your rose-colored glasses have been shattered, walked your parents to those gates, took your strong-willed sister with special needs into your home, and literally three pages more of legit life challenges just in the last 19 years, you eventually find you are deep in the abyss and must find your way back out.
I started hearing about neuroplasticity and how we can rewire our brains. After all, it only believes what we tell it or allow it to believe. The more we think misguided thoughts the deeper they get rooted in our brain as truth. But, we can challenge the lies we've believed by overrunning them and weakening their hold with alternative, positive thoughts that are actually true!
I realized I had been believing the lie I had told myself for years - that I could never be genuinely happy again because I had just gone through too much!
I stopped floundering and started actively seeking joy and happiness with 40 Days to a Joy-Filled Life: Living the 4:8 Principle, after a sleepless middle of the night hunt for the book already somewhere in my home.
The 40 Days study began lifting me to the surface by helping me overwrite the lies.
However, it was Dr. Mary Catherine McDonald’s practice of finding tiny little joys every day of 2025 - and I started a few months late - that got me to the surface of the abyss and primed for the breakthrough that came at the beach.
Like that spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down, so too tiny little joys and the hard things in life, even an abyss of deaths, traumas, heartbreaks, and more.
For instance, this cloudy sky the other day (on the titlecard), if you looked up you could see tiny pockets of blue. And, the wisps of white are reminiscent of silver linings that can only be seen because of the clouds.
Start looking for and pondering those tiny little joys (and joys of all sizes, even those in your memories) and you’ll find your way back, too!
Do it even when it’s hard. Those first few weeks were so hard for me, and sometimes it still is, but it’s so worth pushing through!!!
Making it a practice to find even one tiny little joy every day is literally life-changing!
Looking for #tinylittlejoys (TLJ) daily with @mc.phd over on Instagram, and TLJ seekers/new friends, this year has proven that finding even the tiniest little joy every day, especially on the hard days, helps lift the ‘hard’ just a little bit. Over time it becomes a game changer you will never give up.
When you’ve walked your husband to Heaven’s gates, had to raise your children alone, battled cancer, thought you could never possibly be happy again because your rose-colored glasses have been shattered, walked your parents to those gates, took your strong-willed sister with special needs into your home, and literally three pages more of legit life challenges just in the last 19 years, you eventually find you are deep in the abyss and must find your way back out.
I started hearing about neuroplasticity and how we can rewire our brains. After all, it only believes what we tell it or allow it to believe. The more we think misguided thoughts the deeper they get rooted in our brain as truth. But, we can challenge the lies we've believed by overrunning them and weakening their hold with alternative, positive thoughts that are actually true!
I realized I had been believing the lie I had told myself for years - that I could never be genuinely happy again because I had just gone through too much!
I stopped floundering and started actively seeking joy and happiness with 40 Days to a Joy-Filled Life: Living the 4:8 Principle, after a sleepless middle of the night hunt for the book already somewhere in my home.
The 40 Days study began lifting me to the surface by helping me overwrite the lies.
However, it was Dr. Mary Catherine McDonald’s practice of finding tiny little joys every day of 2025 - and I started a few months late - that got me to the surface of the abyss and primed for the breakthrough that came at the beach.
Like that spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down, so too tiny little joys and the hard things in life, even an abyss of deaths, traumas, heartbreaks, and more.
For instance, this cloudy sky the other day (on the titlecard), if you looked up you could see tiny pockets of blue. And, the wisps of white are reminiscent of silver linings that can only be seen because of the clouds.
Start looking for and pondering those tiny little joys (and joys of all sizes, even those in your memories) and you’ll find your way back, too!
Do it even when it’s hard. Those first few weeks were so hard for me, and sometimes it still is, but it’s so worth pushing through!!!
Making it a practice to find even one tiny little joy every day is literally life-changing!
As I've wrestled with how to bring this website back to the here and how, I've also wrestled with another component I felt needed to be added - one that can stand alone on its own. One that fits well within the parameters of Caring with Marsha.
This website will always include information to help us understand and better support the widows, and widowers, in our lives. It will also include information for anyone suffering profound grief, a grief none of us knew existed until we found ourselves in the absolute thick of it.
As a caregiver to my husband, my mom, and for four years my dad as they each had been hospitalized any number of times before coming home on hospice, as well as becoming my sister with special needs full-time caregiver, I know what it is like to get lost in caregiving others. To not be able to find ways to take care of me beyond survival modes.
During those times I searched for ways to better care for myself. All I could find were variations of "Top Ten Ways of Self-Care" sort of posts. They contained things like: have a quiet cup of coffee to start your day; take a long, hot candlelit bath, etc. These are lovely ideas for someone who needs a break after putting a little one down for the night. They don't even begin to touch what someone in the deepest trenches needs!
As I'm catching up from a three-and-a-half-year hip injury that wouldn't allow me to sit for long without it screaming in pain, I'll be continuing to gather and organize information on all facets that will fit here, so it may be a bit before regular posts become, well, regular!
A friend challenged me to get away for a night or two at a cabin taking my junk journal supplies with me. I think I will instead take my laptop, some notebooks, my phone full of notes, and anything else that will help me get everything under control and organized, then get to writing!
Please be patient as I work my way back, and know I AM COMING BACK with loads of genuinely helpful info for widows/widowers/grievers and for "advanced" self-care tips!
I've been struggling with how to get this website back up running and on fire. Today is the day the spark has taken hold.
Nineteen years ago, within the hour, my life began to turn upside down in a very public place. No one around me noticed.
I am declaring this day to be the first annual . . .
Be Kind to Everyone You Encounter Day . . . For you know not what they are living.
My husband had a pain crash the day before, one he couldn't "bounce back" from. The next morning I called his doctor to ask if it was time to call in hospice.
I was at the grocery store, in the checkout line, during rush hour, when the doctor returned my call. I expected his response, but it was a dead-center gut punch nonetheless.
I had always tried to be kind to others, but this provided an entirely new lens. It was magnified a few months later when I was back in that same grocery store checkout line a day or so after my husband died. No one knew I was a walking-wounded, brand new widow.
We have absolutely no idea with what anyone else is living. If we did, I am sure we would be more kind to them.
This is just the beginning!!!
I am declaring this day to be the first annual . . .
Be Kind to Everyone You Encounter Day . . . For you know not what they are living.
My husband had a pain crash the day before, one he couldn't "bounce back" from. The next morning I called his doctor to ask if it was time to call in hospice.
I was at the grocery store, in the checkout line, during rush hour, when the doctor returned my call. I expected his response, but it was a dead-center gut punch nonetheless.
I had always tried to be kind to others, but this provided an entirely new lens. It was magnified a few months later when I was back in that same grocery store checkout line a day or so after my husband died. No one knew I was a walking-wounded, brand new widow.
We have absolutely no idea with what anyone else is living. If we did, I am sure we would be more kind to them.
This is just the beginning!!!
Every day is an important day to remember our family members and friends who have lost a husband or wife, but that's unrealistic and beyond anyone's scope. So, we have this special day to remind us to stay in touch with them and to remind them we love and/or care about them. To also remind them we remember the one they've lost. Oh, how important that is!
Because I can't pull words together today, here are some wonderful words from The Hope for Widows Foundation blog on this date back in 2020.
"Today on National Widow’s Day, do every widow you know a special favor. Talk about their dead spouse. Speak their name. As a widow one of the most painful things is to the think that others have forgotten your late spouse. Remember, that our lives were forever changed in a single moment. Our life as we knew it ended when our spouse died. The future we had planned vanished, never to happen. Our present became one of basic survival. We no longer felt whole, complete. A part of us died in that moment. And our loss should not and cannot be ignored. Our loss shaped us into who we are now. Someone new, someone who has lived in darkness and fought their way back to the light.
"Acknowledge our loss. Don’t ignore it, change the subject, or refuse to speak their name. These actions are hurtful, they make us feel alone. Like an outcast. Today of all days, honor a widow. Remember their life before death. Speak their spouse’s name. Honor a love so deep that even death cannot end it. "
As we move further into this blog, and the coming resources, it's abundantly important to let you know where I stand on grief. After all, it's the foundation of why we are here.
* All grief is valid.
* All grief should be acknowledged.
* All grief should be respected.
* Grief, in all of its forms, should not be scaled or compared against someone else's - by any measure.
* All grief should be faced and worked through.
All of that said, this blog isn't here to say, "Your grief doesn't count compared to mine." Not in any way.
This blog is here to say some grief is beyond any perception, or expectation, or experience we may have. It's here to share what I've learned so you might better understand the people you care about who are grieving in an exceptional manner, a manner you may not understand.
Or, maybe it's you who are grieving, and you don't understand!
I've been there! I am there, though in a more settled way that I once was.
Grief is survivable. We can even thrive again with our old friend, Grief.
Let's link arms in true support of those we care about!
Marsha
