I was blind-sided by grief a few times yesterday.
….that intense feeling that someone is missing.
….that subconscious lightening in my heart when I thought I caught a glimpse of him in the shed before I remembered.
….looking at my kids who aren’t supposed to be growing up without their Daddy.

I was tired and feeling overwhelmed at the amount of work I have to do, the fact that my house looks like a bomb exploded inside it, the fact that there is nobody else here to take some of the strain.

So by the time I went to bed, I was miserable.
Crying.
Sobbing.
*Knowing* that things would never get any better, but that I had no option but to keep living this half-life.
*Knowing* that I would never meet another man like Greg. That all my fruitless looking at profiles on dating sites just reinforced this. (I must confess that I put my profile on a dating site during the holidays for no other reason than to prove to myself that men still found me attractive and that I could find somebody if I wanted to … but as it turns out, I didn’t actually want to).

Somehow I slept. Probably through sheer exhaustion.

…and when I woke up this morning, I turned on my laptop to see this message:

…and I remembered that I am not alone.
Other widows have felt this exact same way during some point in their journey.
They are surviving.
They know moments of happiness mixed with the grief.
…and they are holding candles to help light this darkness for others…

So for today, I will try to focus on the candle light shining from the hearts of other widowed people and remember that life really does have more light than dark.