Howdy! And welcome to Buffalo Creek, a place to simply relax and dangle your feet in the water. My name is Paul O’Rear, and I will be your fishin’ buddy!

My wife Susan and I have been blessed with two wonderful children: a daughter Ashley who is in heaven, and a son Justin who is in high school (decidedly NOT the same as heaven, according to him). Ashley died of cancer in November 2001. She was 14 years old.

The idea for “On Buffalo Creek” came to me late at night as I was sitting around contemplating stuff (I do that a lot). I have been working for some time at writing a book entitled Living With a Broken Heart. The purpose of the book is to share some of the amazing discoveries that my family and I have made concerning grief and the grieving process, as we have struggled to go on living without our precious Ashley.

As I was sitting around contemplating stuff (I do that a lot), the thought occurred to me, “Why not just start a blog, and use it to share Living With a Broken Heart a little at a time?”

I really believe that some of the things we have discovered about grief and grieving can help others who may be going through their own grief journey, or even those who are watching helplessly as someone they love struggles with grief. By sharing our discoveries through this blog rather than the traditional medium of the printed book, my hope is that those who can be helped by our experiences will have quicker and easier access to this information, and that the potential will be greater to reach a larger audience.

Blogging my book will also allow me to share new ideas as they occur, and revisit old ideas from a fresh perspective as more time passes. In a sense, it will allow the whole Living With a Broken Heart collection to become more of a dynamic experience … rather than a static printed book sitting on a shelf. It will even allow you, the reader, to become part of that dynamic experience by weighing in and sharing your thoughts via the comments function of the blog. I’m excited about the journey, and I hope you will join me!

The Plan

Though Living With a Broken Heart will be one of the foundational premises and ongoing discussion topics of this blog, I will use my posts here to share thoughts and ideas on much more than just grief. Here is the weekly schedule I plan to follow, at least in the beginning.

On Tuesdays, I will post a new segment from my material on Living With a Broken Heart.

On Fridays, I will add a second post for the week. Fridays’ posts could be anything! Some weeks, I might simply post another Living With a Broken Heart segment. Some weeks, I might use Friday’s post to share some of my favorite music, impart a bit of random wisdom or humor, rant and rave about something that really gets under my skin, share a bit of philosophy … who knows what might show up in a Friday post!

Getting the Goods

You can always find the latest post on the “Latest Post” page (clever, no?), which is linked from the top of every page.

Also linked at the top of every page is the Table of Contents for Living With a Broken Heart. The Table of Contents page has links to every Living With a Broken Heart post arranged in book order. Each time I post a new Living With a Broken Heart piece, I will add a link to it on the Table of Contents page.

You can subscribe to “On Buffalo Creek” through your “My Yahoo” page, feed reader, or other RSS-savvy web page or tool. Just click on the orange Subscribe button in the top right corner of this page to be taken to the subscription feed.

(If you’re scratching your head right now and thinking, “Huh?” … just pretend I never wrote that last paragraph. All you have to do is come back here once or twice a week — or however often you want to — and check out the Latest Post page, and you’ll be fine. However, if you want to be able to impress all your friends by throwing around terms like “syndication” and “RSS feed” at parties, a good place to start is this Wikipedia article.)

You also have the option to receive new posts by e-mail. That button is in the top right corner of this page as well.

Thank you for stopping by and checking out “On Buffalo Creek”. It is my sincere desire that something here will connect with your heart.

God bless you.