Updates from Lisa Bailey

Trust Your Decisions After Loss

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 10:37:00 CDT

Letting Go of the Need to Explain Your Choices to Others

I’ve always had a tendency to overexplain things.

Not because anyone necessarily asked, but because I felt like I needed to justify what I was doing. As if my decisions needed to make sense to everyone around me in order to be valid.

After Jon passed, that feeling got even stronger.

I found myself explaining things that, when I look back now, really didn’t need an explanation at all.

I explained why I was able to stay home with my kids.

I explained how I could afford to add an addition onto our house.

I explained why I stopped wearing my wedding ring after nine months.

I explained why I chose to keep homeschooling instead of putting my kids in school.

I explained why I moved from Maine to New Hampshire.

And later…

I explained when I started dating.

I explained when I got remarried.

No matter what I did, it seemed like there were opinions.

Some people thought I was moving forward too quickly.

Non-Toxic Spring Cleaning: Safer Products for a Healthier Home

Wed, 13 May 2026 10:54:02 CDT

Why choosing safer cleaning products matters more than ever for your family’s health

There’s something about spring that makes us want to throw open the windows and freshen everything up after a long winter.

The air feels lighter.

The trees begin to bud.

Flowers start blooming.

The world outside suddenly feels alive again.

And naturally, we want our homes to feel fresh and beautiful too.

For many of us, spring cleaning is part of that rhythm. We scrub the floors, wash the windows, deep clean the bathrooms, and reset our homes after months of being closed up for winter.

But what most people don’t realize is this:

Many conventional cleaning products are actually adding toxins into the very spaces we’re trying to make “clean.”

And over time, those chemicals can affect our health more than we think.

Why Saying Their Name Matters in Grief

Wed, 06 May 2026 15:06:00 CDT

Why widows need to hear their loved one’s name, and how it brings comfort, not pain

Right after Jon passed, people talked about him often.

They asked how I was doing.

They shared stories.

They brought up memories, things I hadn’t thought about, moments I hadn’t seen.

And I loved it.

I needed it.

I needed to hear his name.

I needed to know he mattered to other people too.

I needed to be reminded that he wasn’t just my loss, that he had impacted so many lives.

Talking about Jon helped me process what had happened. It kept his memory close, not just for me, but for my kids too.

But then, something shifted.

Seasons of Grief and God's Faithfulness (part 2)

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 10:50:00 CDT

What Grief Revealed About My Heart (Continuing to Learn to Trust God After Loss)

This March caught me off guard.

Not just because it felt heavy, but because of what God began to show me in the middle of it.

The emotions, the memories, the fatigue are often things that show up during a heavy season.

What I didn’t expect was what was underneath it.

As the month unfolded, I found myself holding my family a little tighter than usual.

My husband.

My kids.

There was this fear of uncertainty I hadn’t fully acknowledged before.

And little by little, God began to bring it into the light.

I realized that I’m still holding onto them.

Seasons of Grief and God’s Faithfulness (part 1)

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 10:38:00 CDT

Why Grief Feels Heavier in Certain Seasons (When Your Body Remembers)

This has been a long winter.

And if you live in New England, you know how it can feel like it will never end. The gray days stretch on, the cold lingers, and you start to wonder if spring will ever actually come.

But for me, March has felt heavy in a different way.

For a while, I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I would just notice it—feeling off, more emotional, more tired, a little foggy. Like I was carrying something I couldn’t fully name.

Until I remembered.

Eighteen years ago, Jon spent the entire month of March in the hospital, going through intense cancer treatments. Every day was long. Uncertain. Heavy with decisions and fear.

One year later, March came again—and this time, he was getting sicker and sicker, and we didn’t know why. There were no clear answers, just a slow decline that didn’t make sense. And no matter what the doctors did, he kept getting worse.

Why I Kept Homeschooling After Loss

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 11:49:18 CDT

Homeschooling After Loss

Jon and I made the decision to homeschool early on in our parenting journey. It wasn’t something we stumbled into, it was something we felt deeply about.

We wanted to be intentional about what our kids were learning, not just academically, but spiritually.

We wanted to teach them Biblical truth and help shape their character in a way that aligned with our faith.

We wanted flexibility in our days.

Jon had worked with many public school students, and he saw firsthand the challenges they were facing. He was concerned about the influence of the world, and he often talked about the lack of practical life skills being taught. We wanted something different for our kids.

What we didn’t know at the time was how much of a gift homeschooling would become when everything changed.

How Grief Affects the Body (and the Path to Healing) - Part 3

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 10:06:25 CDT

Surrender, Inflammation, and Learning to Breathe Again

Looking back, I can see what I couldn’t see then.

It wasn’t just trauma.

It wasn’t just stress.

It wasn’t just sleepless nights.

It was my grip.

I was holding everything tightly.

Holding my grief because if I fully felt it, I feared it would consume me.

Holding my schedule because busyness numbed the ache.

Holding my future because I was determined nothing like this would ever happen again.

But control is exhausting.

And my body was paying the price.

The more tightly I tried to manage my health, my children, my grief, and every possible outcome, the more my inflammation seemed to climb. It was as if my body mirrored my heart, bracing constantly.

How Grief Affects the Body (and the Path to Healing) - Part 2

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 12:30:00 CDT

When My Body Forced Me to Stop

Eventually, my body gave out.

My colitis flared severely. I stopped sleeping. Anxiety became a daily companion. My weight dropped because during flares my body couldn’t properly absorb nutrients, no matter how healthy I ate.

In 2012, unexplained hives appeared — head to toe. Angry. Persistent. Daily.

For three years.

At the time, I didn’t understand what was happening. In hindsight, I see it clearly: prolonged trauma, chronic stress, systemic inflammation, and postponed grief had overwhelmed my system.

My body was screaming what my heart had been suppressing.

Sleep became fractured. I would fall asleep quickly, only to wake around midnight or 1:00 a.m., wide awake. My mind would race in the dark. Fear felt louder at night.

How Grief Affects the Body (and the Path to Healing) - Part 1

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 10:48:00 CDT

When Grief Lives in the Body

Grief is not just emotional.

It is physical.

It settles into muscles, disrupts sleep, alters digestion, tightens the chest, and exhausts the mind. For many of us, it shows up in ways we don’t immediately connect to loss.

Part of my life after losing my husband was navigating a wave of health challenges that, at first, felt unrelated to grief. But looking back, I can see the connection clearly.

In May of 2008, I was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis, an autoimmune disease affecting the digestive tract. My doctor explained there is no known single cause for UC, but it often appears during or after prolonged stress.

Simple Rhythms: You Don't Have to Do Everything at Once

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 10:46:00 CDT

There was a season in my life when I believed I had to fix everything at once.

The grief.

The finances.

The house.

My health.

The future.

It all felt urgent — like if I didn’t hold it together immediately, everything would collapse.

After my husband died, I went into survival mode. I stayed busy. I tried to control what I could control. If I could just organize enough, plan enough, research enough, clean enough, fix enough… maybe I could outrun the ache. Maybe I could prevent the next hard thing.

But here’s what I’ve learned — slowly, and sometimes painfully:

You can’t do everything at once.

And you’re not meant to.