Toni Lepeska
When a Parent Dies
Are we all destined to be children in the wake of our parents’ deaths? In light of the passing of a young mother last week, I questioned the label I’d once used for myself – adult orphan. Could I really compare my loss to that of three children under the age of 10? I don’t …
I didn’t like my name. School teachers and classmates misspelled and mispronounced it. Others expected me to be a boy, to be Tony. Not Toni. But I’ve long since gotten over that, and even love my name now. I’ve never met nor discovered through Google another Toni Lepeska. It’s unique. Maybe you’ve struggled with your …
Writing is a pretty isolating endeavor, but I’ve learned that while I sit in in front of a computer all by myself, I do not write alone. And so I want to thank you, my readers. In the past two weeks, the number of followers to this blog has doubled. Others are readers but are …
I struggled receiving comfort in the idea that my mother was in heaven, even though I believed in the afterlife. And while I am delighted she isn’t suffering anymore, the whole thing for me was she was gone from my side. I believed she gained so much. But I had lost so much. Seven years …
We find ourselves pulled toward others who have lost loved ones like us. We want to help, to listen or to offer guidance. We may even decide to share our experiences in a larger forum. We blog. We write articles. We speak to groups, but we may not reach the numbers we hope for. And …
Her articles were never accepted for publication, but if she’d never written them, I would have lost the stories. I would have lost a piece of her.
Memphis’ first snow of the season reminded me of my daddy, and got me to thinking about how differently we can mourn the loss of each parent. Dad grew up in Connecticut and had a lot more experience with fierce winters than me. He once won a snowball fight so completely that I opened my …
Myth causes us to judge ourselves. It also causes others to judge us. When we don’t measure up to what our myths tell us, we think we’re broken. We try to fix something that doesn’t need fixing. Here are five myths that need snuffing out of the grief story.
Fidel Castro died, and I wanted to tell my mother. You know, she’s dead, too, and whether the Castro news is important to her now, I don’t know. But it would have been important if she’d been alive because she saw his tanks roll into Cuba and destroy her island fantasy. Single, childless and 30-years-old, …
