Being at a loss for words is a thing; especially when your spouse has passed away. Notice I use the phrase “passed away,” a soft and comforting term for describing someone’s death. New Chapters was inspired by so many issues that I experienced and discovered after losing my husband (another soft term), including how people speak to me. As a former journalist, I pay more attention than most to what and how words are used. And as I continue to write this new chapter of life without Brady – my constant companion for nearly 40 years --what people say to me has greater impact than ever before.

As a glass-ceiling cracking journalist, Betty Rollin knew quite a lot about life and death. She was a hard-working, female broadcast reporter with NBC News who typified the now outdated descriptor “career girl,” a term that at age 87, she found amusing.

Grief comes and takes what it wants, when it wants. You have no say. That’s how Jess O’Neill explains trying to make sense of the nearly eight years after the sudden death of his fiancé Beshara Shiferawe in 2016.

Grief is an initiation into the dark side of being human and it requires courage. So says licensed mental health therapist Emily Green who describes grief as an ongoing negotiation with oneself about how to feel, what to think and how to act.

Peter King is the quintessential eternal optimist. He is also charmingly philosophical. At the same time, Peter is a working journalist and therefore, he has always been a realist, accepting life’s hardest moments as well as new adventures, including love.

As my husband, Brady, languished in the hospital during the final days of his life, I looked for something - anything - that would perk up his spirits. He wasn’t communicating and was disconnected from me. We didn’t share the same taste in music, but when I turned one of my playlists, he immediately perked up, gently took my phone and held it to his chest, smiled and shifted to a state of calm.