Have you ever felt like your life as a widowed person has you being pulled and pushed in multiple directions? Like you are walking a tightrope, but nobody bothered to ever give you any lessons. It’s a tug of war between responsibilities, loyalties, and things you want. Honoring that other life. Living this one. Grieving , but not staying…
National Widows Day is a Thing
Today is National Widows Day. There is also something called International Widows Day. The purposes of both of these days is to A: acknowledge widowed people B: be kind to widowed people C: spread awareness about how widowhood affects a persons life, and how, in some parts of the world, widows are even looked down upon or in danger. So, I do…
Things That Matter
Since becoming an involentary widow almost 8 years ago, I have changed in many positive ways. I am more empathetic. I am more sympathetic. I am less judgemental of people’s lives and situations and circumstances. I listen better. I stop to talk with people more. I find more meaning and beauty in very tiny things. I exist in the moment…
Grief Mistakes
Soon after the sudden death of my husband, almost 8 years ago now, I began trying to navigate my new reality and world that I never asked for or wanted. I didnt know what the hell I was doing. There are no guidelines or handbook for how to “widow” properly. I hadn’t even put away all of our dishes and kitchen items and gifts from a few years…
Closer
Lately, Im feeling a strangeness that is stranger than my normal daily strange. I keep finding ways to make you feel closer. Its like, I cant seem to find a way for you to feel close to me, nearby, present, in the way that I want. Maybe it’s because Im in a happy and loving relationship, and Im feeling delayed thoughts of guilt for that. Or…
The Guessing Game
Sometimes I get tired of playing the guessing game. The guessing game of what really happens after we die. Knowing there is never an answer to the thousands of questions I have, and the only way to actually know for sure, is to die myself. And even then, there is no guarantee I will know what happens after death, because if the answer is…
It Never Gets Old
Being a widow – it gets old really fast. There are days and weeks and hours where I want to scream out to the universe or whoever cares: “IM SO OVER THIS!!! WHEN WILL THIS WIDOW THING END???” But it wont end. He will always be dead, so I will always be his widow. And truly, it is my honor, because it means we are forever connected. But…
It Gets Softer
When I first became widowed, I remember asking someone who had been a widow much longer than me, if the pain would ever get easier. Her response was: “Not easier, but softer. It gets softer. ” I didnt really understand what she meant. It has been almost 8 years since my husband Don’s sudden death. In the beginning, and for a very long…
Trauma Triggers: Is This Still a Thing?
In July, it will have been 8 years since my husband’s sudden death from cardiac arrest bulldozed into my life. Eight years. There are so many days when I trick myself into thinking that Im really okay now and maybe this wont affect me anymore. And then I get knocked over by something such as this ……. On Wednesday, I went to the gym…
Repeating Repetitive Things
I miss him, I miss him, I miss him. Why did this have to happen? How do I come to a place where things make more sense? How do I blend my life today with the life I never finished? Why do I get to keep living and he doesnt? How will it ever be okay that he won’t experience new things? Will the missing of him ever get less intense? How do…
Scared to Remain, Scared to Change
I have always hated change. Especially when something would change drastically or quickly, and I didnt have much choice in the matter. Like that time when I was about 7 years old and we went on a class field trip to a Maple Farm, and I somehow ended up with a gigantic ball of maple syrup in my long, curly, gorgeous hair. And then my dad, for…
A Life Unfinished …
It hangs in mid-air, swaying through the trees, like an echo, sometimes, and other times, like a scream. That life unfinished, the one we didn’t get to have, because you died. It lingers there, in the breeze, like a hundred-thousand question marks, and never any answer. That life unfinished haunts me sometimes. I wish I had a book I…