Ruminating...why I wrote A Journey Well Taken: Life After Loss

I've been asked several times if I decided to write A Journey Well Taken: Life After Loss while my husband was ill. Even though I have always been a writer, for as long as I can recall, writing was the last thing on my mind while he was sick. It wasn't until two years after his death that I decided to put my thoughts down on paper, or rather, computer screen.

My original intent was to write down my fears, thoughts, memories and anger and use it as a catharsis or a healing for myself. I wrote 20 or 30 pages and thought I was done. Then I kept adding to it little by little each day, and before I knew it I had about 200 pages. During this time period I'd been having a really hard time (about two and a half years after my husband died from cancer) and loneliness was really kicking me in the butt when I first started it. Then, at one point I kept getting this thought that other women needed to read it. Considering how personal this "journal" was, I resisted this idea of sharing it, at first, probably for about six months. Then I decided to really own up to my experience and just deal with it, put it out there. Since that moment when I decided to really put it out there, I had this certainty that it would end up where it needed to go. I would do my best to put it out there, but ultimately, it would do what it was supposed to do. There was really nothing passive about the thought that it would go where it needed to be, it was just a matter of "knowing." it would stand up to whatever it needed to be.