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!

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At every week’s end, I sit down to write this blog and sometimes surprise myself with what pours out.  Regardless of whether I’m busy, riding an emotional high/low, processing a new grief feeling or just ‘checking in’ with myself, there always seems to be something to say. 

It can be a very cathartic process.  Some weeks, I’m burning with a need to get something off my chest.  Often I don’t even know what it is that I’m going to write about, I just place my fingers on the keyboard and the words start to form.  But this week… well, I’ve got nothing!

For the first time as a Widow’s Voice writer, which is coming up to a year, I am sitting here and nothing is happening.  I’m not sad about anything.  I’m not excited or surprised about anything.  There have been no significant events this past week to bring up a new thought or emotion.  It’s not even that I’m numb or too detached from myself to connect with the grief. I’m feeling fine – very neutral and steady.  I just ‘am’. 

So I start to think, ‘this is new’.  What does it mean to feel ‘nothing’?  Is this some kind of progress?  Or am I back in some form of self-preservation denial?  I don’t thing so.  I mean, it doesn’t feel like I’m avoiding anything.  I just feel at peace. 

We are one month away from the start of my ‘major milestone period’, as the ninth of June will be our two-year wedding anniversary.  Then shortly after, my birthday and then two year anniversary of his death.  Within eight weeks I went from marrying him to burying him. 

Last year, I experienced all of these as ‘firsts’ and it was a tough couple of months.  I’m coming back around now for a second go and am trying not to set any expectations but would by lying if I said I think it will be smooth sailing.  I’ll then be in my ‘third’ year, which just feels surreal. 

So maybe, right now, my mind and body are just riding this lull.  It is a calm before the storm?  I won’t know for sure until the clouds start forming on the horizon.  I’m not going to over think this, I’m just going to be here in the moment and let it be. 

So apologies, dear readers, that I don’t have more for you today.  I feel very uninspiring, like I’m letting you down.  But, as we know, we can’t force these things.  We can’t control or steer this wild ride called grief so maybe the message in today is just to let it be and take the moments of peace while we can.