Widow's Voice

I’ve Lost My Body Connection…

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I’ve lost my body connection.  In the months since my dearest husband died, my body has become alien to me and I realized it fully last week when I joined a gentle stretching yoga class.  My daughter was the instructor and she is, indeed, gentle in both movement of body and in manner.

Maybe, possibly, the difficulty had to do with the varying heart-opening poses we did that day.  Stretching backwards, holding our arms behind us, swaying goddess poses-each one I did brought emotions up in much the same way we might feel when our gorge is rising and we just know that vomit isn’t far behind.  How’s that for imagery?  And yet that’s just what happened to me that day, as I moved and shifted.

My body physically hurts these days, as if I’ve aged 20 years since Chuck died.  He and I exercised regularly together for years, walking and hiking especially.  I can count on one hand how many times I’ve exercised since his death and I ponder that frequently and sometimes ponder further that maybe I should feel guilty for the lack of guilt from not taking care of my body.

But, I don’t.  Feel guilty that is.  Quite honestly, I don’t care.  And don’t have the energy to either exercise or care about that I’m not exercising.

So, this yoga class brought home to me the realization that I have almost a psychological resistance to opening up.  Which contradicts all I’ve striven for since last April:  keeping my heart open to love.  And I do.  Outwardly.  I’m good with opening up outwardly.  Inwardly I suspect not so much.  There’s so much pain involved.  My body is starved, I think.  Starved for his touch, and I’m feeling it. 

It was all I could do to not run screaming from that studio.  Screaming with pain and agony and missing-ness and wildness.  Did I run?  Nope.  I did each pose as best I could, struggling in a way I’ve never struggled before, tears tracking down my face, holding back sobs, images of his illness and death and the months since pounding in my head and heart.

Who is this woman I am now?  Who is the woman I’m becoming?  I have no idea.  No frickin’ idea.  It’s all about survival for me right now.  Yes, I believe that somewhere there is an amazing future for me but that doesn’t hold much water for me because, paradoxically really, I can’t see a future.

Life is all about the here and now.  And finding a way to connect with my body and make it again familiar and well.  It was suggested to me that maybe it isn’t so much about exercising right now as it is about massages and nurturing and loving me again.

Grief is hard, isn’t it?  I know that this isn’t all about Chuck dying.  Its also about the recognizable life that he and I shared dying.  Its about the me who died with him.  This time of grief and mourning is, I suppose, a birthing of sorts for me and it is accompanied by the pangs and pains and struggle that has to happen for life to be birthed again.

It sucks.

About Alison Miller

My beloved husband Chuck died while we were full timing on the road. We’d rented a condo for our stay in southern CA, and I had to leave 3 weeks after his death. All I knew at that time was that I had to find a way to continue traveling on my own, because settling down without him made me break into a cold sweat. I knew that the only place I’d find any connection to Chuck again was out on the roads we’d been traveling for our last 4 years together. I knew nobody out on the road, I knew grief was a great isolator, and I knew I had to change the way I traveled without him, to make it more emotionally bearable for me. So I bought a new car, had a shade of pink customized for it, bought a tiny trailer and painted the trim in pink, learned how to tow and camp, and set out alone. My anxiety was through the roof, and all I knew to trust was the Love that Chuck left behind for me. I found Soaring Spirits early on, thank god, and the connections I made through SS helped ground me to some extent. I needed to know that other widow/ers were out there in my world, because I felt so disoriented and dislocated. Through Soaring Spirits, as the miles added up, my rig taking me north, south, east and west, I found community. I found sanity…or at least I learned that if I was bat shit crazy, I was in good company, and realizing that ultimately saved my sanity. PinkMagic, my rig, is covered with hundreds of names of loved ones sent to me by my widowed community, and I know it isn’t visible to the naked eye, but I’ll let you in on a secret…she actually illuminates Love as I drive down the many roads in our country, and I can see it through my side view mirror. Love does, indeed, live on~

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