KimBoo York
KimBoo York lives in a small Southern town and is an author and full time graduate student. At 40 years old, she "rebooted" her life after facing up to many serious issues brought on by the deaths of both her parents when she was in her mid-20s. A very naïve and sheltered young woman at the time, those deaths combined with the loss of her family's house and the deaths of her dogs (as she says, "like a bad Country Western song…") derailed KimBoo's life for nearly fifteen years. KimBoo is nearly 42 at this point, in 2011, and still trying to figure out all the details of being divorced, single, in graduate school, and broke. She makes no pretense to be one of those awesome, perfect people who makes lemonade out of tragedy. She's not beautiful or rich and certainly is not very lucky, but she is working hard at living her life authentically, both for herself and in memory of those she has lost. Like most people at Open to Hope, KimBoo is simply a grief survivor trying to keep going. Her book about her experiences as a young adult orphan was self-published last year: Grieving Futures: Surviving the Deaths of My Parents, My Home, and My Future.
Articles:
‘Normal’ Grief is Unique for Each Person
Grief automatically throws us into a time of change. Some of us might regain a semblance of the life we once had, while others veer off into surprising, unexpected paths. Either way, where ever and whomever we used to be and everything we took for granted has changed. We tell people we’re “fine” mostly because we know that’s what they want to hear, but there is a part of us that really wants to believe it, too. We want our sense of normal back, that time in our lives when everything (no matter how much we might have complained at […]
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Remember Yourself
As my country (the U.S.A.) was awash in memorializations to 9/11, it is appropriate that I was mulling on the matter of death-day anniversaries, something we shove under carpets when it’s not headlining on CNN. I’m sure many mourners note the date of death and watch the calendar with trepidation as the anniversary approaches, planning graveside visits and other timely memorials. I am not one of those people. I’ve had to learn the hard way that ignoring those dates on the calendar doesn’t make them not happen. For years I pretended they would sail by innocuously and without notice; I am […]
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Walking Backwards into the Future
Mistakes haunt us. Regrets torment us. Grief – for any loss – rips at us. We pick at these wounds hoping for miraculous healing. We study them, trying to figure out what went wrong. We relive them in our minds over and over looking for what we could have done differently. We waste years staring at our past, walking backwards into the future. Let me boil down the essence of 10,000 self-help books on the market right now: turn around, put your back to the past and look at the path ahead. No lie: it’s the hardest thing to do, […]
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