A note from LauraJo — October 2026
I originally shared this reflection as an audio episode of Morning Reflections on May 12, 2026. I'm now sharing the reflection here as a written article, with the original recording included, so you can listen, read, or simply sit with the words a little longer.
The reflection itself remains as I originally shared it.
Hi.
Today, this isn’t a morning reflection. This is a late-at-night reflection.
Today is the one-year anniversary of my husband’s passing. Don passed away on May 11, 2025, Mother’s Day.
So while I’m recording this on May 11, I probably won’t post it until May 12.
With that said, this is not a grief post. It’s more of a reflection. Just some thoughts I’ve had over this last year on who I’m becoming, the peace and calm that I’ve found, and the desire to continue this life adventure.
And I think at the core of this is an understanding of myself. A love of myself.
When I quit my job in 2021 to rediscover who LauraJo is, I don’t know what I was expecting to do. It didn’t go how I thought it would. And looking back, I don’t even know what I thought that would look like.
But I had been running on adrenaline for so long, it felt normal. I’m sure many of you can relate to that.
I’d actually suffered from adrenal fatigue a few times over the years, and my body was keeping score even when I wasn’t paying attention.
When I finally stopped, it took me, honestly, nine months to a year to truly come off that high and allow myself to be still without guilt.
And through this, I discovered peace.
It was really a beautiful thing.
I could quiet my mind, something I had been trying to do for a few years. I was trying to meditate, but I was so busy in my head that there was not a quiet, peaceful place during my meditations.
And when I learned to quiet my mind, it was quiet.
I think finding this place of peace and calm allowed me, over these last few years, to just be in such a different space.
It doesn’t mean my life was perfect by any means. It doesn’t mean I had it all figured out, something we can talk about here shortly. And it doesn’t mean everything went the way I expected it to.
What it does mean is that I felt good in the moment and was able to live more intentionally.
I’ve never been a big worrier, but it does pop up. And I know that I made some not-so-smart decisions in 2023 with this underlying fear. I was really the one who was hurt by those decisions because they resulted in some financial hits.
But that’s another topic for another recording.
I’m just so grateful for the work that I had done.
Even in my conversations with Don after November 2024, when we knew that the things he needed to do to keep functioning were palliative and required him to go in for outpatient surgery every eight weeks, that’s when we started having those real conversations about his passing and what things might look like for me.
This process of connecting with myself from the inside out was really beautiful because it gave me the capacity to hold grief differently than I think I would have five years before that.
Life is an adventure. It is not this perfectly mapped-out journey.
Adventures rarely unfold exactly as we planned them.
I thought the next chapter was going to include Don physically beside me. But instead, this adventure has changed shape, and I still get to participate in my life.
I’m still here. I still have next steps to choose.
And one of the things that has brought me so much peace—and I don’t even know that I can say it came from a specific place or a specific thought—is this vision that shows up in my mind.
Don and I walking this path together for 43 years. Five children. Six grandchildren. Walking this path.
And on May 11, 2025, those paths diverged.
Don went on to his next chapter, his next “what’s next” place, and I continued on my path.
So in my mind, our paths have diverged for this period of time. I don’t know if they come back together at some point. I like to think that they do.
But at this point in my life, he has gone on one path, and I have gone on this other path.
And that has given me such comfort.
My love for him can still exist. It’s just different.
And so, in my mind, I’m on this path. And for the first time, I’m on this path alone.
I say alone because it is just me in my household and in my life. Yes, I have children, and yes, I have friends, but it’s really my life.
Having gone from living 20 years with my parents—even though I’d been off to college for a year—when I married Don, I had just turned 20. I lived with him for 43 years, and now I’m on my own.
And so I’m in this beautiful space.
It gives me this opportunity to live with grief but also have peace. To feel sadness and yet also feel such great gratitude.
Yes, there’s loss, but I am still living.
I miss him. I miss how I was able to be when I was with him. And I get to continue forward.
There is uncertainty, and I’m leaning into trust.
There can be tears, and yet I can feel excitement about what’s still possible.
As we say in many of my conversations with friends, joy and sadness can coexist.
I’m grateful for the people in my life who support me. The few of my children who are cheering me on and reach out with intention.
One of my daughters, the one who lives out of state, flew in Friday night and surprised me Saturday morning. She woke up and felt that she should be home this weekend. So she booked a flight and flew home.
I got to spend Saturday, Sunday, and today—this afternoon and evening—with her. She flew in for Mother’s Day and this significant weekend, and it was so beautiful to have her here with us.
And my other daughter, who is just a rock for me. She gets to hang out with me—or I get to hang out with her—every time they have an open house here at my house.
And then my daughter and her husband with the triplets, my triplet grandkids.
On Saturday, I got to see my son and his wife and their three boys. Got to see him twice because we had an unexpected run-in at Texas Roadhouse.
I’m just surrounded by these people who are so supportive and cheering me on.
And I have these friends who are witnessing this chapter in my life.
You know, widowhood is unfamiliar territory for most of the women around me. In my circles, it’s new territory for all of us.
I do have friends who have lost partners, but they’re not people I talk to on a regular basis.
The beauty of being supported while I’m still finding my way is something I am so grateful for.
I feel less alone while I’m still on this deeply personal path in this adventure.
And I apologize for the coughing. But since I don’t edit these recordings, I’m not going to take it out.
So while I’ve been on this path, like I said, life rarely unfolds according to plan.
I’ve let go of control because that’s always an illusion anyway, right? It’s a false sense of security.
But this peace I feel comes from the relationship I’ve developed with myself over the last few years.
I’m not seeking outside validation for the decisions I’m making.
This is an internal job.
And this reinvention continues to happen, even with this profound loss, with this path I started on in 2021 of rediscovering myself, getting to know myself.
Oh, and I can tell you how scared I was in another recording.
But it has been a beautiful adventure, and it’s taken me into this place of leaning in to trust myself. To not have to figure it out. To not have to know the next step and to be okay with that.
Because in my head, I always want to figure it out.
But I’ve learned that if I’ll just trust—trust that I’ll know the next right step and that I’ll know it at the right time—that has given me such freedom.
I can stay in this place of peace and calm.
I listed my house, for example, in February.
And then I had this big work project that came up in March. It was so funny because I finished it around midnight on April 16 or April 23. I think it was April 16.
I finished it up, and about three days later I thought, “Oh, I’m ready to move. Bring the buyer now. It’s the right time.”
I had this internal shift.
Even though I’d already listed my house, and my house was ready—some agents have walked through it and wondered if anybody was living here, which it really doesn’t look like anybody is unless you look at my office—I had this internal shift of, “Oh, I’m ready to move now.”
And that was another reminder that I do know.
If I trust those emotions and lean into that knowing, I do know.
Anyway, those are just a few of the reflections I’ve had on this one-year anniversary of Don’s passing.
Our paths have diverged. The adventure continues to take shape.
The work I’ve done didn’t keep me from grief, but it helped me stay connected to myself inside the grief.
I’m learning to trust the next right step instead of needing the whole thing mapped out.
I still miss him, but I’m still here.
And I have learned that peace is not the absence of grief.
The grief is there, and it hits me at some of the strangest times, just out of the blue.
I no longer believe that life has to go according to a plan to be meaningful. That I have to produce a certain thing or be a certain way.
I’m allowing life to unfold instead of demanding that it show up in a particular way.
And honestly, there is so much freedom in doing that.
Ponder on that.
How is grief showing up in your life?
Is life an adventure, or is it a journey that you’re bearing, that you’re grinding through?
What small shift in your life, what small awareness, if you could notice it, could make a difference in how you feel every morning when you wake up?
Or even better, every night when you go to bed.
What’s keeping you awake at night?
Maybe that’s the best place to start.
I’m sorry, I don’t have a purpose when I start these recordings. These are just thoughts coming out of my head, out of my mouth to you, good, bad, or ugly.
But maybe it’s what’s keeping you up at night that you should take a look at.
And I would love to hear from some of you what those things are.
But I think with most other things, including Don’s passing, I have found this beautiful peace.
And I am so grateful.
So, what’s keeping you awake at night?
Let’s start there.
Make it a great day. 🌿