Life After Death

It has a clinical name; Posttraumatic Growth, or PTG for the frequent user. Scholarly articles like this 2011 find in Journal of Nursing Scholarship tiled "Posttraumatic Growth Among Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom Amputees" defines PTG as "a positive psychological change experienced as a result of struggle with highly challenging life circumstances."   Sounds pretty straightforward, no? Concise and simple, or simply concise. Ha.

For a while, the only growth going on in my world was in the area of alcohol tolerance. The emotional thrashing known as grief parlayed into my entire system turning numb to anything but pain. Sure I laughed and managed to crack some sick jokes. But there was nothing funny about any of it. Within a month I would have been confident challenging an entire fraternity to a drinking contest. Not a good path for anyone to embark upon, let alone a suddenly single mother of four small children. Something had to change.

I had no idea the process of learning to not always hate your life had such a clinical term, or that people actually studied it. I just knew I had too many people offering to help, four astonishingly brave children who needed me, and no real excuse for this Humpty Dumpty to not be put back together again.

My first book, Front Toward Enemy, details the raw aspects of those first years. Here is the trailer for it: Front Toward Enemy  My new book, How to Woo a Widow, allows me to focus on the other side of grief- the PTG part. Only it’s a funnier read than any scholarly article. In it, I include scenes inspired from real life. Mine or my friends. As I begin planning its sequel, I am putting out the call for similar stories to incorporate.

Please join in. Share stories of yours or your friends. The kind that make you laugh and cry or cry and laugh within moments of each other. The good stuff.