Ten years ago, I landed in Washington, DC for the first time and felt immediately overwhelmed. Lost. Small somehow.

It was spring break 2016. Tom, Trey, and I had come with one of my dearest friends and her family. They had treated us to the trip, something I don’t think I’ll ever forget. At the time, we hadn’t yet told Trey that his dad had ALS.

I didn’t know then that Washington, DC would become woven into the fabric of my life.

Over the years, I came back many times. Almost every trip tied in some way to ALS through the Elizabeth Dole Foundation, through I Am ALS. In a strange way, this disease brought me to this city, and despite the reason, I grew to love it.

But every version of DC carried a different emotional weight.

When Tom was sick, coming here meant fear. Fear that I was too far away from him. Fear that something would happen, and I wouldn’t get back in time. There is something terrifying about being a three-hour flight from the person whose life you are desperately trying to hold together.

Then came the trips after he died. Those carried a different heaviness. Sadness. The ache of experiencing things I could no longer share with him. I remember bringing Trey to an Elizabeth Dole Foundation event not long after Tom passed, and everywhere I looked there was this invisible reminder that Tom should have been there too.

Even as DC became familiar, it was never emotionally light.

Somewhere in the middle of all these trips, I came to Washington with Grant for the first time.

It was strange.

Up until then, DC had only existed in my mind as a place tied to Tom, to ALS, to advocacy, to grief. Every memory I had here traced back to that chapter of my life. So bringing another man, someone who represented a new love and a completely different season of my life felt emotionally complicated in ways I wasn’t fully prepared for.

But I was also excited.

Grant had never been to DC, and I found myself wanting to share it with him. We walked the monuments, explored the museums, laughed, ate good food. And slowly I realized something: DC no longer belonged only to my grief. For the first time, I was making memories here that weren’t rooted in fear or loss.

That may have been the beginning of seeing this city and honestly my life in a different light.

This trip, I landed in Washington almost four years after Tom passed away and ten years after that first spring break visit.

Something felt different.

Walking through the airport, I noticed the fear wasn’t there. The heaviness wasn’t there either. No anxiety. No sadness attached to the city itself.

Instead, I felt strong. Not strong in the fake “I survived it” way. Strong in a grounded way. Strong in who I am now.

I think my month across the Atlantic changed something in me. Crossing the ocean. Road-tripping through England and the Netherlands. Wandering through places I’d never seen. It was more than a vacation, it was growth. I stopped looking backward at my life as though all the best moments had already happened.

That realization is complicated because my life with Tom was beautiful. He was extraordinary. He was a loving husband, the most devoted father. Sometimes I still think nobody could have wanted to be a dad as much as Tom did. He loved us so completely.

And for a long time after losing him, I think part of me believed happiness belonged to my “before” life,

But standing in Washington this time, I just felt different.

I am happy.

Not pretending. Not surviving. Actually happy.

People who knew me during the ALS years still ask sometimes, with this softness behind the question: How are you doing? And lately, the words that come out of my mouth surprise even me.

I’m good.

And I mean it.

I’m doing work that doesn’t feel like work because helping caregivers, veterans, and families navigate impossible systems has become part of who I am.

I’ve opened myself up more. I laugh more. I feel lighter.

The exhausted, grief-stricken caregiver from 2016 through 2022 isn’t gone. But she isn’t leading anymore.

I will always grieve my husband. I will always miss him.

But grief is no longer the only thing living inside me.

Now there is joy too. Friendship. Purpose. Community. Strength.

There’s Trey, who has grown into such an incredible young man. Sometimes I look at him and think Tom would be so unbelievably proud of who we both became after everything we endured.

There are the people ALS brought into my life, this strange and beautiful family built through loss, advocacy, resilience, and love.

And yes, there is Grant.

There are blessings now I couldn’t see when I was buried under survival mode and heartbreak.

That doesn’t mean losing Tom was somehow “worth it.” I hate when grief gets wrapped in neat inspirational bows. If I could have had my old life back — Tom healthy and alive — I would have chosen it in a heartbeat.

But since life didn’t give us that option, I’m grateful for the strength that carried me through anyway.

Because there were moments I truly didn’t think I could survive this. Moments I didn’t want to survive it.

But had I not kept going, I never would have met this version of myself.

And honestly? I like her.

So to all my fellow widows walking through grief and wondering if they will ever feel whole again — I hope one day you look back and realize just how strong you became while carrying what felt impossible.

Today is a good day.

Earlier this week, I was looking out at an incredible view I never imagined I needed to see when I had one of those moments that just stopped me.

Who am I… and how is this a day in my life? Because this wasn’t the life I was raised to imagine. I grew up in a small Texas town in the 80’s where success had a pretty clear definition.

You find a partner. You get married. You buy a home and get an education. You build a good life. You have kids. You raise them right. And if you’re lucky, you grow old together. That was the dream. And honestly? I had that.

A great marriage. An amazing kid. A career I worked hard for and was proud of. A life that, by every measure I knew, was successful. I thought that was it. Not in a bad way—just in a this is what life is supposed to be kind of way. I didn’t know there was anything beyond that. And maybe part of that was because I hadn’t seen it.

When I walked through some of the hardest seasons of my life—losing babies, losing the life I thought I’d have, facing things no one had prepared me for—there weren’t a lot of people talking about what came next.

I didn’t see examples of what it looked like to rebuild. I didn’t see what life could be on the other side of that kind of loss. So I didn’t know what “after” could look like. I only knew how to get through “during.” And for a long time, that’s all I did.

Survive.

Until one day, it wasn’t enough. After everything fell apart, I didn’t have a big vision for the future. I didn’t sit down and map out a new life. I just knew I couldn’t stay where I was. So I started saying yes. Not because I had some big dream. But because I didn’t want to disappear.

Yes to things that felt uncomfortable.
Yes to things I didn’t feel ready for.
Yes to opportunities I didn’t fully understand.
Yes to life—even when I wasn’t sure I trusted it yet.

And somewhere along the way, something started happening that I still don’t fully know how to explain. Life started getting bigger. Not louder. Not flashier. Just… fuller.

The work I get to do. The people I’ve met along the way. New love. New adventure.

It is a life that exposes itself every day, and one that I am happy and excited to live.

And even more than that—

The peace.
The connection.
The ability to look ahead rather than brace for what comes next.

And sometimes—if I’m being really honest—I still have those moments. Sitting in the middle of my life… and thinking—How is this my life?

Because I didn’t know this kind of life was possible. didn’t know you could walk through that level of loss, sadness, and anger… and still find joy again. I didn’t know you could lose everything… and still build something meaningful. I didn’t know you could love again in a way that feels different—but still whole and beautiful.

Maybe those examples were always out there. Maybe I just wasn’t ready to see them. But I am now. And if there’s anything I understand today, it’s this:

You can walk through hell and back…
and you don’t have to stay there.

You can walk through the valley—
but you don’t have to live in it.

You can find dreams you didn’t know were options.

And along the way, you might find people who grab your hand and walk with you. Some will stay. Some won’t. Because the truth is, not everyone knows how to walk through hard. But you will find the ones who do. And those are the ones who matter. I think that’s what drives me now.

Because I remember what it felt like to be in it—the fear, the loneliness, the not knowing what comes next. And now I also know something I didn’t know then. What if what comes next… is good?

What if it’s better than anything you could have imagined—not because it’s easier, but because you’re different? I don’t spend as much time trying to define the dream anymore. I am just so much better at listening to my heart.

What if, I just say yes?

Because I’ve already lived through the worst thing I thought I could survive. And I did survive. So now I ask myself—What’s the worst that could happen?

What if it works out?

And maybe that’s the point. I didn’t know I was allowed to want this life. But I do now. And I’m not letting anything—including myself—stand in the way of living it. Because it’s not just about putting one foot in front of the other, first you have to say yes to even begin moving forward.

Lara

Tomorrow I turn 56 and ten years ago tomorrow, Tom received the preliminary diagnosis of ALS. My birthday has never been the same.

It’s strange to realize that a decade can pass and still feel close enough to touch. Ten years. A full lifetime in some ways. A blink in others.

When Tom was diagnosed, we made an agreement — not out loud like a contract, but in that quiet, serious way you do when life has just punched you in the gut.

I would not waste another decade. Because I had done that before.

After we lost the twins. After John. After surviving a 24-week preemie and everything that came with that season of trauma. Ten years went by, and I floated. I was present, but not living. Breathing, but not building. Existing, but not awake. It took a full decade for me to realize grief had quietly stolen my thirties and the early part of my forties.

When ALS came into our home, Tom and I both knew — if I wasn’t intentional, ALS and his death would take another ten.

That realization is the fire that drives me now.

It’s why I leaned into the grief instead of running from it.
Why I went to therapy.
Why I let the hard conversations happen.
Why I chose to feel everything instead of numbing it.

It’s why I refuse to be sad about growing older. Aging is a privilege Tom was cheated out of.

Every line on my face is time he didn’t get. Every trip, every adventure, every wild “why not?” decision — none of it is luck. It’s work. It’s courage. It’s dragging self-doubt, guilt, and fear into the passenger seat and driving anyway.

I have been told on a few occasions that I’m lucky to be living this life.

I’m not lucky. I’m brave. When fear shows up — and it does — I remind myself: I can do hard things.

I don’t really feel like I have a choice. Or maybe I do. But something in me refuses to let death, depression, or ALS steal one more minute.

And yet — here’s the part I didn’t expect to write…Even in this full, intentional life… I am alone.

Grant and I are building something beautiful. It works for us. It’s steady and real and grown-up. We are committed. But commitment in your 50s and 60s is different than commitment in your 20s and 30s. We both have histories. Children. Grief. Long marriages behind us. We know we can count on each other. But when crisis hits? When something shakes the ground?

There is still this quiet, instinctual thought: I’m on my own.

I don’t know if that’s widowhood.
I don’t know if it’s surviving long marriages.
I don’t know if it’s trauma rewiring the nervous system to never fully relax.

Maybe when you’ve buried the person who was your “always,” some part of you never again believes in absolute permanence.

Maybe when you’ve lived through loss that rewrote your DNA, you carry independence like armor.

This post wasn’t supposed to be about that. But apparently, ten years has a way of pulling the truth to the surface. Here’s what I know on the edge of 56:

I am not the same woman who floated through her thirties and let ten years slip by unnoticed.

I am a woman who has loved deeply, buried her husband, grieved honestly, and still chooses life.

I am still scared sometimes. I am still alone in ways I don’t fully understand. And I am still moving forward anyway.

I have learned that time does not pause for grief. It either carries you quietly away… or you decide to stand up inside it. The last decade held diagnosis, decline, death, rebuilding, fear, therapy, love again, and more courage than I knew I possessed.

I did not float through the past ten years and I will not float through the next. The next ten years are not something I’m waiting to see happen. They are mine to build. Mine to risk. Mine to live.

And I intend to live them fully.

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!

Ten years ago, three little letters were introduced into my vocabulary: ALS.

We were in that strange in-between phase when Tom noticed weakness in his left hand, and his primary care physician thought it was carpal tunnel. The weakness started in December 2015. He was referred to a neurologist in January 2016, who ordered an EMG, followed by another referral to an ALS specialist scheduled for March 4, my 46th birthday. The official diagnosis came at the end of March.

I didn’t know then that the diagnosis would change more than our future.
I didn’t know it would change me.

It changed how I speak, how I love, how I set boundaries, and how I understand time.

Back then, I was a very different person.

To know me before ALS was to know how much I avoided confrontation.  I softened my words. I gave people the benefit of the doubt even when it cost me. I had no concept of boundaries. I believed time was something I could borrow from later. I was blissfully ignorant of many things.

I wasn’t ignorant of death, that I understood. But the idea of Tom dying from a terminal disease? That I could not grasp. Even after the diagnosis, my mind could not wrap itself around life without my handsome, green-eyed husband. He was strong. He promised to love me forever. I lived for him and Trey. We had a lifetime together, so I thought. If love alone could have kept him here, I would not be a widow today. But love is not enough when facing a disease like ALS.

And ALS changed everything I knew. Everything I felt.
ALS changed me completely.

ALS steals from you.

It steals your blissful ignorance.
And ALS steals presence before it steals life.

Before Tom died, the man I once shared decisions with, absorbed fear with, and leaned on when I couldn’t stand on my own began to disappear in pieces. The disease hollowed out the middle first…conversation, partnership, shared emotional weight. How could he give me what he no longer had while struggling with his own diagnosis and progression? He couldn’t.

I was married, but as the disease progressed, I became increasingly alone and afraid.

As caregiving intensified, the world around us grew quieter and smaller. Friends disappeared, maybe because they didn’t know what to say. Then Tom got sick and needed a tracheostomy and my world got even smaller. Exhaustion pushed me into survival mode and I wasn’t doing a great job of it.

Then COVID arrived, shrinking an already small world into near isolation. Support faded, not out of cruelty, but out of discomfort and a world that shut down. I faded too. Exhaustion and the need to keep Tom safe became all-consuming. I no longer lived life for Trey or me, but for Tom.

Let’s be clear: Tom didn’t “check out” by choice. ALS took his ability to show up the way he once had and toward the end, FTD made things 100% harder. And when that happened, I learned what it meant to carry fear, responsibility, and grief without a safety net, and I carried it alone.

That was when I began to see myself as a widow in training, someone learning how to live without her life partner, her soulmate, while he was still alive.

I was scared. Constantly.

That’s where boundaries entered my life, not as a buzzword but as a survival mechanism. Boundaries were how I stopped bleeding emotionally. They were how I kept going when there was no one left to lean on.

Ten years ago, I hated confrontation. I avoided it at all costs. I didn’t believe in myself the way I do now.

Now, I don’t mind confrontation. Not because I enjoy it. Not because I’m hardened. But because ALS taught me how much time can steal. Being direct isn’t cruelty, it’s respect. Circling issues, softening truth, or staying silent costs time. And as I learned with Tom, time was in short supply. So time is something I am mindful of.

These days, when things get hard, I sometimes think, What’s the worst that can happen, my husband dies? Been there. Done that. Still standing.

That lesson stayed with me. It shows up in how I interact with people and how I approach relationships.

Today, I view interacting with people differently.

My motto is simple: I cannot ask others for something I am not willing to give myself.

Think about that.
Do you give grace or just expect it?
Do you lead with respect or only demand it?
Are you as honest with others as you expect them to be with you?

I enter relationships honestly from the beginning. I don’t hide who I am. I’ve already been stripped bare emotionally and spiritually, so there isn’t much left to conceal. That honesty also allows me to quickly gauge how committed someone is to real connection, whether personal or romantic.

Professionally, I will always lead with respect, grace, and humility regardless of how others show up.

Personally and romantically, I communicate my needs instead of hoping they’ll be guessed. When something feels off, I say so. I don’t confuse silence with peace or compliance with love.

Surviving profound loss showed me that I could stand on my own. It also taught me that grief is a forever state and something I will carry in varying forms until my last breath. It doesn’t always remain sharp or consuming, but it never fully leaves.

After Tom died, I wasn’t opposed to loving again. I just assumed it would happen much later. I thought I needed to be stronger, more healed, before I could offer anything meaningful. Connecting with Grant during a low point in my life allowed me to be vulnerable and to show all the broken pieces of myself. Communication and honesty became part of my healing and his. In our shared pain and growth, we began building a relationship grounded in openness. That foundation revealed a depth of emotional intimacy I didn’t know was possible. It was, I believe, when my healing truly began.

Ten years ago, I lived differently.
I interacted with the world differently.
Ten years ago, I was a different person.

Today, I live intentionally. I am creating and nurturing this chapter of my life in ways I never imagined and I am grateful for it but never forgetting the cost paid for it.

Did Tom know he was training me to survive after his loss? Did he see something in me that I couldn’t yet see that I would endure and even find ways to thrive?

I didn’t become colder, but I could have. I didn’t avoid the pain, but I could have. I sat with it. I listened to it. I learned from it. I grew.

ALS took a great deal from my life, but it also stripped it down to reveal what matters most: presence, honesty, boundaries, and love that doesn’t require self-erasure.

Those lessons were earned the hard way.
And yes, I am different.
Not just happy again, but proud.

Proud of the woman who crawled her way out of the darkness and found the light again.