A New Home for My ‘Hi, Dad’ Stories

There are some changes that happen quietly, almost without us realizing they are happening. This is one of them.

For so many years, My Beautiful Adventures has been the place where I have shared my life with you. The beautiful parts. The messy parts. The adventures, motherhood, travel, love, loss, and all of the moments in between.

And when my Dad died, this became one of the places where I tried to make sense of a world without him in it. Grief became part of my story. It still is. And I know now that it always will be.

But something unexpected grew out of that grief… I wrote a book.

Hi, Dad began with the little moments when I would suddenly feel my father around me—a yellow butterfly, a cardinal, a beautiful sunset, a song, a familiar scent, a soccer goal, a plate of Italian food, or one of those impossible moments when the world seems to whisper, “keep looking”.

Instead of saying goodbye, I started saying, “Hi, Dad.” And somewhere along the way, those two words became much bigger than I ever imagined.

Hi, Dad became a book. Then it became a website. Then it became a book shop. And now, it has its own blog—a place where I can continue writing about grief, signs, love, my father, and all of the “Hi, Dad” moments that continue to find me.

Because of that, I wanted to let my longtime readers here know about a small change.

My Grief Writing Has A New Home

Going forward, most of my deeply personal posts about my Dad, grief, and my “Hi, Dad” moments will live on the Hi, Dad blog at HiDadBook.com.

I hope you will visit from time to time. I hope you will read. And if you are grieving someone you love, I especially hope that something you find there makes you feel a little less alone. Here are three recent posts I have written:

• How My Dad Wrote Himself Into My Children’s Book
• A Wish Come True: The “Hi, Dad” Moment That Happened As My Book Launched
• The Bridge Between Us: How Panda Carried My Father’s Love Forward

This does not mean grief will disappear from My Beautiful Adventures. How could it? Grief is part of me now.

My Dad is woven into the person I am, the mother I am, the writer I am, and even the way I notice the world around me. There will inevitably be moments here when I talk about him. There will be butterflies. There will be signs. There will be stories about missing him and loving him.

But now those stories have a home of their own.

The Adventure Continues

My Beautiful Adventures will continue being exactly what its name has always promised: a place for the beautiful adventure of living.

There will still be travel and family and motherhood. There will be Joaquín and Lucas and Panda. There will be beautiful places, ridiculous moments, discoveries, photographs, partnerships, and whatever life decides to hand me next.

And there will still be me. Just a version of me who now understands something I did not fully understand when I started this blog all those years ago: An adventure does not always mean getting on an airplane and going somewhere new.

Sometimes the greatest adventure is learning how to keep living after your world has changed. Hi, Dad is part of that adventure now.

So, if you have followed me here through all of these chapters, I hope you will follow me over there sometimes, too. There are so many stories I still want to tell. And Dad, if somehow you are reading over my shoulder—keep sending the stories.

I will keep looking!