I’m writing this from an airplane, somewhere over the Indian Ocean, as I’m on my way to Bali to spend a week at a beautiful yoga and healing retreat. It’s a funny story actually… this whole trip only got planned on Tuesday. Yes, as in four days ago. It came about through a range of unusual circumstances and has really had me thinking about…
Widowed by Suicide
My Husband, My Blessing
This has been an emotional week for me. Tuesday would have been our second wedding anniversary and as I looked back at the stunning photographs of our beautiful day, my heart was filled with a complicated mixture of happiness and sorrow. Over the past few months, I’ve been doing such a good job of living in the ‘now’ that I haven’t made…
Here and Now
In the past (almost) two years since my husband died, I’ve been able to negotiate time off work for all the big milestones: his birthday, our wedding anniversary, his death anniversary and even my birthday. This helped take the pressure of these challenging emotionally-charged days and let me focus on self-care, rest and just basically doing…
Letting Go of my Dream, Making Way for the New
For a long time after Dan died, I had a ritual of talking to him each night about my day. It helped me feel close to him, like he was still part of my life. My grief counsellor thought it was a healthy and helpful way of maintaining a relationship with him and it bought me a lot of comfort. I realised this week that at some point, this nightly…
Oh Happy Day
Something really awesome happened this week. A very dear friend found out she was pregnant and rather than feel that expected pang of grief that had become standard when I hear of someone else’s ‘happy life announcement’, my first thought was how wonderfully excited I was for her. This is huge you guys! For 22 months now, I’ve had…
A Day to Celebrate Love
When my husband died, I was still in the process of integrating in to his ‘before life’ and forming connections with his friends. We lived in Brisbane and he was from Sydney, so most of his close friends weren’t local and we therefore didn’t get to hang out with them regularly. I knew they were wonderful people though, lots of fun, loyal…
Writer’s Block
NOTE: I wanted to start my post this week by thanking everyone who left such lovely and supportive messages on my last piece – Scared of the Anger. To receive your support after allowing myself to be so vulnerable really warmed my heart. I love our widowed community! — At every week’s end, I sit down to write this blog and sometimes…
Scared of the Anger
It’s been a year, nine months, one week and two days since my husband took his life and I’m only now just starting to feeling angry. Even typing that, makes me ill. I’m very much NOT ok with feeling angry. When he first died, I had a fleeting moment of thinking ‘how could he have made this decision for us, without consulting me!?’ and…
Dating in the After
For some reason, I seemed to have developed the assumption that dating would be easier this time around. God knows why. I think, maybe, I decided that after being through something so horrific, that by the time I got to the stage where I felt ready to open my heart again I would have accumulated some kind of positive ‘love karma’ and earned…
Until Death Do Us Part
Yesterday I was faced with another one of those big hurdles for us widowed folk – a wedding. My dear friend married the man of her dreams and began her life as a Mrs. This wasn’t my ‘first’ wedding as a widow, my best friend got married three week’s after Dan’s death. While I attended that event, wore my bridesmaid dress and…
A Beautiful Dream
I was so happy in my marriage that when I look back and remember that time, it almost seems surreal. My incredible wedding day, filled with so much love, feels like a dream to the point where I start to wonder if it actually happened. A beautiful, delicious dream that had me walking on air for 45 days. I’d found a soul mate and we’d made the…
617 Days and Counting
I reached another widow milestone this week: on Thursday Dan had been dead for 617 days. The same number of days that I was blessed to have him in my life. One year, eight months, two weeks and four days. That’s all the time we had together. I’d been dreading this moment for months. For some reason, I even have a countdown app on my phone, so…