4.10 years later, I am content, happy and joy filled AND I continue to miss Mike. This is something I will do for the rest of my life. I miss him. I simply do. He was a wonderful person and I miss sharing my life with him. But, more than missing him, I am filled with a deep gratitude for what was between us. Mike loved me well and he changed my life with his love. His love was strong and true and big. He was everything that I ever wanted love to be. Mike made me a Fan Girl of Love and I get to keep all this. This stuff didn’t die with him. All of this is etched into my Soul. His love is in my bones, it is imprinted on my skin. I am strong on his love.
About Staci Sulin
Living Forward
We can not shed our grief like I had hoped early on. Instead, we must carefully and tenderly absorb it into our bones. Grief is in the air you breath, in swirls around in your coffee, it is in the sunshine that warms your shoulders, and it lingers in your bathwater. You can not escape grief; I now realize that this isn’t possible. And, it is not the goal. It never was.
Marry Me (2021 version)
Now, today, August 20th, 2021 I no longer want to be the wife of a dead man. I want to live my life and my life no longer physically includes my dead fiance.
Life is for the living.
Mike died.
I did not; and I will be damned if his wife slowly dies here mourning him.
The best way I can honor Mike is to life a big, beautiful life. So, that is what I plan to do.
Self Love (take2)
Learning to fiercely love ourselves might be the greatest and most important love affair of our lives.
(Go on, read that again. Take a moment. Let it sink in.)
Yep. As widowed people, it is up to us to master love in a new way. We have lost the physical touch, and the voice of our beloved; but we still have the blueprints of their love imprinted on our skin and in our Souls. We know how to give and receive love because of them. So, now we must craft a way to love on ourselves when our lovers are no longer here to do this for themselves.
Makeshift plan addendum
The blog below was written on September 24, 2018. I sure have come a long way since I wrote this blog three years ago. So much life has happened for me since this time. And, I am so very, very grateful for this. I didn’t give up. I believe life could be good again, and […]
Everything but the Kitchen Sink – take 2
I originally posted this blog April 2019. But, it merits a repost. The topic is sexual bereavement and it is very real and it need to be discussed more candidly and more often.
As widowed people we do not often discuss how our sex lives die with them. But, the truth is that this is an enormous secondary loss.
Sexual bereavement is a thing. It is very real and it profoundly affects us as we live on without the one we love. Daily, we miss the intimacy of being a couple. And, nothing, not one thing can replace this. The daily nuances that exist between two lovers. Your unspoken language. The secret words you whispered to one another. The tone he reserved for just you. The dialect of love.
As surviving spouses we miss the stolen glances. The way his adoring eyes watched me prepare a meal. The winks he sent me across the room during a dinner party. Tenderly placing my hand on his leg as he drove us some place. Walking side by side and casually reaching for his familiar hand; and, then interlocking my fingers with the man I love. Their hands. Their kiss. That place on the small of my back that only he knew. The way he gently brushed the hair out of my eyes before his lips met mine. The way I fell into his chest as he pulled me to him. All of this. Every last thing. This is the stuff we ache for. This is the stuff that I quietly grieve.
Strong on Your Love (Repost)
Staci is out of town this week, so we’re reposting her blog from February 19, 2018. Enjoy! I am tired of trying to be – ‘not sad’. I am exhausted from the aching in my heart. I am weary from recognizing Joy everywhere, All around me, And, still feeling hollow inside, I am aware […]
Fly the Coop
There remains a lot going on in my life as I transition from my house of fourteen years to my new home. I have been between homes since the end of April; and though I am unsettled, I feel fairly calm. My new life is starting to take shape and this is exciting. It has been 4.7 years since I have really felt any type of warm anticipation about anything substantial. The feeling of hopeful anticipation about my future has been foreign to me in grief. Hope feels like the feels from another life I used to live. But, recently, hope reigns supreme for me. I guess this is what thawing from grief feels like. Slowly, I have worked to come back to life and I am more than ready to reap the benefits of my hard work.
The Evolution of Grief (part 3 of many)
After 4.7 years, I can write to you and say that I actually like my life again. And, I am almost sort of “happy” once again too. I have come to accept my life without him; and, I am also excited about my future. These are all things that I could not imagine when Mike first died. But, alas, I am a very different widow than the one who began writing to you in 2018. Early on, I created mantras for myself so that I could somehow survive in a world where he is not. Once upon a time I used to say, “love got me here, and love will get me through”. And… it has. I was right. Love (in all its forms) for the win.
Your Touch (edited 2021)
Touch has helped bring me further present. It has helped reawaken me to the moment I am living in. Touch has resuscitated me in ways that nothing else can. Touch has given me the air I need when I was struggling to breath life back into myself. For me, touch has been healing in a new a different ways.
Touch has brought me back in touch with my humanness. I have allowed myself to acknowledged that I am still alive. And, because I draw breathe, my skin still hungers for the touch of another human being. Touch in and of itself is just that. It is not love, but it is something. And, sometimes a nebulous thing is really a big deal.
Wanderlust Revisited
I need to see new things. And, also, see the same things – somewhere else. I need to stand on different street corners. And, walk roads that lead to new people and places. I need to breathe the air – somewhere else. Anywhere else. I feel like I am holding my breath, Living here in […]
Knock off Life
The problem is, I have no idea what or who will help me feel this Soul fulfillment that I long for. It has been 4.6 years since I have felt truly content and I do not know when a sense of peace will ever return to me.