One year ago today, I published Before the Sink Overflows (and Other Warning Signs of Hope), my first collection of short fiction.
It was scary. Exhilarating. And, at times, a little ridiculous.
I’d spent months creating characters, inventing conversations, and obsessing over sentences that nobody had asked me to write. Then, suddenly, I was putting those stories into the world for complete strangers to read.
There’s something uniquely terrifying about that last part.
I wasn’t sure what to expect. But I knew why I’d started writing again.
Kenji.
Our Shiba Inu had been part of our family for so long that life without him felt like a different life altogether. When we lost him nearly two years ago, I found myself with an unfamiliar emptiness. The routines were gone. The sounds were gone. And I had all this time that used to belong to him.
Writing helped fill some of that space.
Not that it made the grief disappear.
Here’s something I’ve learned: Grief isn’t linear.
[Read more…] about The Birds, the Silence, and the Dog I Still Miss