I think it was around 2019 that I stopped putting up my Valentine Tree.

Yes. A Valentine Tree.

I’ve always kept a tree up year-round and decorated it for the seasons. But somewhere along the way, I traded red hearts for Mardi Gras beads. Valentine’s Day represented love and love felt like the thing that broke me.

I’m a romantic. That may surprise some of you who only met me in my ALS era, but I am a big ole softy. I don’t have one love language. I have all of them. When I say I loved Tom with every cell in my body, I mean it. He was my everything.

And it wasn’t enough to keep him here.

Love wasn’t the magical, all-healing force that saved our story. Before he died, I truly believed I would not survive life without him. After he died, my heart didn’t just ache, it shattered. There were days the only instruction I could give myself was: just keep breathing.

I didn’t know how a broken widow was supposed to build a new life.

About a year later, I could feel something shifting. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life alone. I wanted to share this life and the adventures I wanted to go on, but who would sign up to love a broken widow? And could I even give love again without losing myself in it?

What I didn’t understand then was this: the very thing that broke would also be the thing that heals me.

I didn’t fully grasp that until months after meeting Grant.

I saw myself as damaged. Less capable. Less willing. Loving deeply once had cost me everything, so why would I risk that again? But the more time I spent with him, the more the shattered pieces began quietly reassembling. Not dramatically. Not all at once. Just steadily.

One day I blurted out, “You make me happy.”

He smiled. He already knew.

Love in my 50s looks different than love at 19. It’s quieter. Steadier. More foundation. It’s consistency. Showing up. Honesty about our scars. Respect for the great loves that shaped us before we found each other.

I am grateful for the beautiful life Grant shared with his late wife. Just as he honors the life I built with Tom. We know what real love looks like. We know what it costs. And we are willing to love again anyway.

Because that’s what love does.

Love can break you.

But it can also be the very thing that heals you, if you let it.

This year, I put up my Valentine Tree again.

And tonight, February 15, I’m hosting Grant and his family for a Valentine’s Sunday dinner.

Lasagna.

Because sometimes healing looks like red and pink hearts on a tree and second chances around a dinner table with a great tablescape…another love language of mine!