I wrote the last blog post over the course of a couple days. My first attempt to write it caused a panic attack and after recovering I was too tired to finish it. When I returned a couple days later to complete writing it, I realized I wrote the entire post about Jeffrey and not “to you”. I do not know what it means that I instinctively wrote about Jeffrey and not to him, but here we are. Writing about Jeffrey and not to him.

Today is fourteen months since I looked across a small hospital room at Jeffrey’s dad and agreed it was appropriate to donate his organs. A powder keg of energy lights up my body and has all weekend. I am weepy and lonely and confused on how to pass time. Without weed or alcohol, I vacillate between complete boredom and needing anything to help me take a break from the intensity of integrating how lonely I feel. I told Heather no one is witnessing my life. There is no one here to know I did my laundry, vacuumed, made myself dinner, or worked out. There is no one to come home to and explain that I felt very emotional after going to a movie last night. Dottie and Carla can only provide so much validation of my existing and it mostly comes from them in the form of demands for pets, walks, and feeding.

I woke up still in a somatic lightening storm and knew I could only alleviate it by walking. I took Dottie to Upper Park and headed straight up Monkey Rock, losing the trail as water seeped out of the Earth absconding clear pathways. Wisps of cirrus clouds reminded us Earth dwellers the vastness of the atmosphere. In contrast, damp lava rock anchored the ground peppered by green grasses nourished by a wet winter. There has been so much gray weather since November I bought a SAD lamp. Lived in Seattle sixteen years and Baby bought her first SAD lamp because she could not delineate the edges of depression and grief and overcast weather. It is likely placebo effect, but I do think it helps me wake up in the morning. I sit with coffee with the SAD lamp on for 20 minutes while I watch my progrums (spelled how I say it in my head) before I start the day.

As I walked along the canyon, Dottie trotted ahead of me, looking back every so often to make sure I was still there. I never walk with her off leash as I do not trust she will have good manners when seeing another dog. Dottie always gets so excited to show other dogs how well she can play, but not all dogs have the patience to let her show them. A pesky, loving little sister. Today we chanced no leash, and somehow did not come across any dogs for Dottie to perform for. We walked mostly alone, the occasional trail runner passing us, pairs of female friendships coming their way back down. The air was crisp, the kind that burns your throat when you take a deep breath. The warmth of the sun embraced my body between the knife cuts of the whispering breeze. I asked myself “Is that you?”. I find Jeffrey in the moments where two things are true at one time. The air bit with bitterness and the sun defrosted my insides. The canyon is hibernating and alive. I feel both the weakest and the strongest I have ever been. There is some metaphor tied to Jeffrey’s bipolar diagnosis here, but I am not sure how to paint it.

I took Jeffery to Upper Park when we visited Chico for his birthday in 2023. I feel him when I am there. Just as film would splice back in time the memories of a loved one gone, I braid together the pieces of him in parts of Chico I loved. I know he would have loved living here. Chico is a container; a place my body knows is okay to be honest and messy. It arguably held the messiest parts of me, the parts that forged in the fiery template that became the barometer of everything I ever did after leaving and since coming back. I always tell clients that even in the messiest, most traumatic childhoods, the body knows where the nervous system formed and will feel quieter. Mine formed here, in the spaces between finches and dark-eyed juncos dancing in the winter sun. In the sincere “good mornings” offered by each person I passed by.

I have not had any THC since 12/30 and have noticed a considerable lift to depressive symptoms. I no longer feel shame, despair, or fear of never clawing my way out of this hole. I cannot know if that is because of THC’s biochemistry leaving my body (withdrawal is 30 days), a natural cresting of the Grief, or something else. I am sharing in the event anyone else is wondering if THC is having unintentional side-effects. I am not at all claiming a forever abstinence from it but am relieved to not feel so weighted in my experience of living. I told myself 2025 was my year to survive, that I would not judge the way I remained alive the first year of living without Jeffrey. I knew I would need to reevaluate if the techniques were worth keeping and am doing that now.

The most painful part of 2026 is realizing I can no longer say Jeffrey died last year. He died fourteen months ago, but it is no longer last year. Jeffrey died in 2024. I can feel the energy of my own want to move past this experience, to be in something new. But then I remember I never will move past it. This is who I am now. This is part of me. It is forever. Jeffrey did not die last year; he died in 2024. Fourteen months ago, today. I will forever be chasing the feeling of his wonderment about the canyon alongside me. Chest tightens as Grief sits on it. Tears form and fall. I gasp for breath and realize I was not breathing. Dottie trots back toward me and stands leaning against my thigh so I will pet her. We keep walking. The sun is whole-hearted and the breeze is bitter. Neil Young Helpless starts playing in my headphones. I am alive.