Widow's Voice

Next Year~and a Goal

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http://widowsvoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/10432097_694813893906881_9097147659734386916_n.jpgToday I watched the flashmob video from Camp Widow.  I was inspired to watch it after seeing the tutorial video on the Soaring Spirits Loss face book page.

The tutorial.  I barely got through it and only got through it with tears coming from my eyes and my chest feeling tight and sorrow filling every part of my body.  And the whys of that were immediately evident to me.

Since Chuck died one year, one month and 18 days ago, I’ve lost all sense of my body and I marveled at the dancers on the video because of this loss.  As I travel now, I realize that I am so completely in survival mode that I feel like an animal.  Which is so weird to say, I guess but, well, there you have it.

 

Chuck and I exercise walked regularly and while I am no athlete, I could manage an 8 mile hike with little problem.

The other day my daughter and I climbed maybe 15 shallow steps and I was winded.

I’ve gotten through some yoga classes but cried my way through them and was astonished how much it took out of me.

I used to hoop-dance.  Not well, but joyfully, moving and bending.  I’ve attempted it since Chuck’s death but almost become physically ill.

In this past year and these months, I’ve struggled to keep my heart open, no matter the degree of grief and pain and it takes everything I have in me to keep that going.

I’m learning new things constantly in this full-time life on the road, meeting new people daily.  Lots of energy being used.

My lungs aren’t winded so much from being out of shape, (though that does add to it) but because I’m holding so much grief and pain in them and breathing effectively is a conscious decision and that takes effort.  My chest area is heavy and I feel every pound of it.  A sharp edge is continually lodged there, as if a sword has pierced it.  Each heart beat is painful.

My body is an unknown territory to me.  The life I lived with Chuck was a sensuous life, filled with touch.  I took time to be attractive to him and I enjoyed it thoroughly.  Now my hair is going gray, my skin has lost its’ glow and I’m carrying extra weight.  All of these are but externals, of course, and reflect my own sense of lost-ness.

I am so very aware of being in survival mode.  Right now it’s a struggle to just remember to drink a glass of water.  My diet?  Hah!  I have no idea what’s good for me or not.  At the end of most days I have no idea of what I’ve done other than drive another mile on this Odyssey and absorbed the love from those I meet.

At some point, I’m hoping this will change for me.  I’m pushing where I can, letting myself be right where I am when that is necessary.

Next year?  Next year it is my goal to attend Camp Widow and if there is a flash mob, to join in with the other dancers.  I want to move again, I want to feel Chuck’s love for me move through my heart and soul instead of having grief from his death choking me and I want to dance my love for him and I want to feel love for life again.  I don’t want to just survive.  If I have to live (and apparently I’m not going to die of a broken heart), then I want to live loudly and exuberantly.  I want to open my arms and shriek my defiance of death to the skies.

Camp Widow is my goal.

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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