My blogs

About me

Introduction	Anyone who has worked in the restaurant business is familiar with the terms, front and back of the house. The front of the house is the showcase. The back of the house is the engine – the part no one sees. I once owned a small tea shop. During that time I came to see that the front and back of the house had become a metaphor for my life. While I continued to smile and try to extend grace and goodness up front, in the back of my house I was struggling. Central to the back of the house drama was the emotional turmoil I lived with daily. It wasn’t until the final stages of my husband’s battle with mental illness that I realized how much I had allowed it to affect my own mental, spiritual and emotional life. Tragically, both my literal and metaphorical “house” imploded, on a stormy evening in March of 2006; the night I arrived home to find my husband dead by his own hand. Although I am by trade a storyteller, this is not a story I ever wanted to tell; no one does. It is a tragic story, but paradoxically by God’s grace, a redemptive one. It is the story of integrating pain and learning to live authentically whether with a mentally ill loved one, or alone - in the same house.

Introduction

Anyone who has worked in the restaurant business is familiar with the terms, front and back of the house. The front of the house is the showcase. The back of the house is the engine – the part no one sees. I once owned a small tea shop. During that time I came to see that the front and back of the house had become a metaphor for my life. While I continued to smile and try to extend grace and goodness up front, in the back of my house I was struggling. Central to the back of the house drama was the emotional turmoil I lived with daily. It wasn’t until the final stages of my husband’s battle with mental illness that I realized how much I had allowed it to affect my own mental, spiritual and emotional life. Tragically, both my literal and metaphorical “house” imploded, on a stormy evening in March of 2006; the night I arrived home to find my husband dead by his own hand. Although I am by trade a storyteller, this is not a story I ever wanted to tell; no one does. It is a tragic story, but paradoxically by God’s grace, a redemptive one. It is the story of integrating pain and learning to live authentically whether with a mentally ill loved one, or alone - in the same house.