Victim of Identity Theft 👤

Not the kind where creeps take your Social Security number, name and address and try to impersonate you with American Express 💳.

But the kind that happens after your person dies.

The kind that strips you of everything that made you, you.

I have a feeling you know where I’m going with this.

Over the past couple of years, one by one, parts of me that were stolen have revealed themselves, and I’m sure there are more. After much self-imposed introspection, I’ve come to this conclusion: me, widowed, 51 years old, parenting grieving teenagers while grieving myself, is NOT a midlife crisis.

No, rest of the non-grieving world!!! 😤 I am NOT in the process of “reinventing myself”. That is a luxury likely reserved for people who feel complete and alive.

I have realized that the me that I was with my husband, died with him.

So now I am in the process of a rebirth of sorts. Like fragments of my old DNA were left behind in the shell of who I still am, but everything else is gone, gutted, taken from me in the cruelest way.

And this process of rebirth has proven to be long, painful, dark, slow, isolating, and uncomfortable, with small markers of growth along the way. I’m starting to think that the Liliana who was safely loved in a marriage and partnership was naively oblivious to the unfairness and cruelty of life, maybe even leaning into toxic positivity.

Back-to-the-Futured 🏎️

At 51, I’ve been “back-to-the-futured” to my late teens, when I was figuring out what I wanted to be when I grew up and who I would spend my life with. Except now, I am solo-parenting grieving teenagers while menopause knocks at my door.

F&*@ off, menopause! 🤬  Ain’t nobody got the time, energy, or space for you right now!!! Gracias.

And for this kind of identity theft, there is no protection plan or monitoring. Just damage assessment and damage control.

Here are some “items” in my Identity Theft report 📝:

• Career / Storytelling
  My husband and I were broadcast journalists by trade  📺 and storytellers by 🩶 . That ended abruptly for both of us the day he went into the ER. Journaling while caregiving for my husband and kids, while living in a perpetual state of terror, was never an option. Writing after his death felt terrifying. I thought if I dug too deep into my thoughts and feelings, grief would swallow me whole and I wouldn’t be able to come back. This blog is my rebirth of storytelling. Not the story I wanted to tell, but the one I now feel I have to tell.
• Woman / Wife
  Liliana the woman was a wife who loved doing life with her partner in crime. So many times I told my husband, “I wouldn’t want to do this with anyone else. I’m so happy we are together. I love you so much.” She was fun, type A, a multitasker, the last to leave a party, involved in everything she could handle and plenty she couldn’t, but did anyway. She had an amazing husband. Not a perfect man, but perfect for her.
• Human / Citizen
  Today’s Liliana has zero tolerance for BS, drama, or toxicity, and is getting very good at spotting it. Small talk hurts my brain, but I also don’t want to shock people by answering “not great, my husband died” when someone asks how i’m doing at a networking event. My social appearances and interactions are now carefully curated and studied before hand.
• Future
  Us. We were planning to buy a place by the beach. We talked about where we’d live once the kids were in college. We were a team, with ideas and plans for our future as a couple, as a family, and for our careers. We were going to travel the world. And so much more.

 

Identity 🦹🏻 Theft Report… continued

• Past / History
  So many times, when our kids say or do something, I look for my husband in my mind to say, “remember when…?” All the remember-whens are gone 🫥. I have no witness to our past life, to our travels, to the days that turned into nights and nights that turned into days in the trenches of raising newborns, toddlers, school-age kids, tweens, and teens. No witness to the funny, the crazy, the simple moments we shared in almost 20 years together. This is an irreplaceable loss.💔
• Faith
  Our Christian faith was a pillar of our life together. It kept him living supernaturally peaceful and joyful in the face of a death sentence. It sustained me in those isolating, dark days when I searched for any ray of hope to keep him alive. When my husband died, my faith was shaken to the core. At his Celebration of Life, I said God and I were on barely speaking terms. Two years later, it’s not much better, but I want it to be. I’m leaning into it, hoping for restoration.
• The Afterlife
  I always believed the body rests and the soul returns to God, the giver of life. To heaven. I believe I will see my husband again. But when his absence here on earth is felt so acutely and hurts so deeply, I’m not sure what I believe anymore. Can he see us? Can he hear me? Is he watching over us? Is he really happy and whole?           I am hoping my beliefs will settle again one day, maybe even become rock solid. I know eventually I will have to choose what I believe. I guess I’m not ready yet.
• Sense of Safety
  I fear for my health and my life daily. The thought of our kids going through another traumatic hospital stay, illness, or loss breaks me in ways words can’t explain. I cannot, in good conscience, tell my kids everything is going to be okay, in any situation. I now know that I don’t really know that. But I also don’t want us to live in fear. It is exhausting.

And… in the midst of so much loss of identity, I have also chosen to recognize what I call the “Gifts of Grief.” At the risk of sounding positively toxic, I’ll share those soon.

For now, let me sit in the suck of what has been taken from me, which I suspect may look wildly similar to what has been taken from you.

Hasta la próxima! Until next week Peace.