Grief

The news was shocking but not a shock.

LOS ANGELES — Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has acknowledged that he fathered a child with a member of his household staff, a revelation that apparently prompted wife Maria Shriver to leave the couple's home before they announced their separation last week.

Impatient in Waiting

A good friend is in that awful but interesting medical purgatory; the time between the Before the Thing Happened and After the Thing Happened. There's a statistically  excellent chance she'll get good news Monday and move on with her life. She'll be relieved, probably let herself feel the full terror of the possibilities for a minute or two, call her husband and then get back to work. It will not be cancer. It will be nothing.

But for now, she's floating in the limbo of Waiting.

No matter who you are or what your life circumstances are or have been, somebody (or many people) mothered you and you mother somebody (or many people). Or fathered. Or parented in some way. It's not the biology, the DNA, the color of the eyes or the color of the skin. It's about being the person or people who do the loving, frustrating, inspiring, reliable, relentless work of parenting and being parented.

We all find ourselves in the role of parent and child. That's the focus of my series of posts collected here.

Welcome to the worst club you'll ever be forced to join. If you're grieving, if you've suffered a profound loss, you're in. Grief does not discriminate. You can be any age, race, any socioeconomic class. Broken hearted? You're in.