Well friends… my time has come.
I am retiring from widow’s voice.
Today is my last blog.
I’ve been thinking about quitting for a couple of months now. I couldn’t figure out why I wanted to quit something that has always brought me such relief and peace.
While talking to a friend about not writing anymore, he said “The Melinda I knew a year ago was a widow. Being a widow was your identity and made you who you were. The Melinda I know now has been widowed but is not a widow. It no longer defines you.”
Ah ha. It clicked. After the three year anniversary of my husband’s suicide I made major changes. Not changes that I actually went out and did. It just happened slowly, piece by piece, over time inside of me, slowly changing me… suddenly I was no longer a widow. Being widowed happened to me but it did not consume me and my everyday life anymore.
A year ago I honestly thought being widowed would kill me. I was in so much pain I didn’t understand how I kept waking up every day. I now have days that are rough, they can be sharp, but they don’t leave me completely useless. I can cry and grieve and move on with my day… the rough days no longer destroy my day. I can now sit with my grief… and move on.
While I will always be widowed and it will always hurt, I will always miss my best friend… but I am moving forward and finding peace. I don’t live in the horrible memories of my husband’s final days and his suicide.
I was honestly a little upset and scared to tell Michele that I was retiring… especially because I couldn’t quite figure out why I felt it was time to retire. She said “I love the transitioning of writers on our blog, because it means we are healing. And that, my friend, is a beautiful thing.”
She is right. I wrote to heal. I told my story to heal. I told my story to get it out of my soul. Now I am healing.
For that I will always be thankful for Michele and Soaring Spirits. Thank you guys for allowing me a place to write and to heal. Thank you for believing in me and believing my story would make a difference.
I will miss my readers… but please remember that if I can walk out of this and heal… so can you.
Being widowed will not always identify you.
With that I am off to work on my “And then…”
Let me introduce the new Sunday writer, Sarah Treanor –
Sarah is an artist and writer out of south-central Texas. She lost her fiancé on June 12, 2012 at the age of 29. He was a helicopter pilot who had just finished flight school and landed his dream job as a commercial pilot. While on a contract, he was riding along with another pilot when they hit power lines and crashed. He was killed instantly.
Two months after his death, she quit her job as a designer, left the city, and moved to the country to stay with his family and focus on healing. With a fire to continue in his footsteps and live her own dreams, she is now devoting much of her time to her art and writing – including recording her journey and their life together on her blog http://our1000days.com. She has said that no amount of pain is a match for her fire to live life as an adventure – the way they did – and she wants to inspire others who have endured loss to do the same.
Welcome Sarah!