Widow's Voice

You Are Alive. You Are Whole.

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Anyone else reading the Outlander series? Watching it on Starz?

If you haven’t, do yourself a favor.

Time travel. Scotland. Relationships. Love. Passion. Trauma. Strength. Philosophy. And so much more.

I’ve always been a romantic. Always. And I always will be. It’s part of who I am, and a part of me that I cherish.

Chuck loved that about me, too.

In our years together I was always reading, always searching for more ways to explore and strengthen our marriage. Discovering deeper ways to show our passion for each other, more ways we could show up for each other.

Reading and watching Outlander has reminded me of that intrinsic part of me.

I haven’t dated in these years since his death, and don’t have the energy/finances/will to invest in doing something I wasn’t ever good at back when I was much younger. If I could have another such relationship, I believe my heart is open to it, even as I acknowledge a willingness to create another into being. I want to be swept off my feet again. I want that intimacy again, but I want it there instantly. In a blink my eyes kind of way, without the tedious work of searching such a man out through dating.

So I live in my memories with him. Outlander helps me remember what it was between me and Chuck. The passion. The fierce devotion we had for each other. The true intimacy between us that made sex intense and frequent. That connection between two people that must be lived because it cannot be explained.

Outlander has brought an easing to the shards of pain around my heart and soul and given me a bit of ease for the first time since Chuck’s death.

I keep a pink hi-liter pen with me as I read. Words and phrases that catch my attention get a strong line drawn through them.

In a scene from the books that is truly hellish, I found words that  struck into my soul, spoken from the heart of the main character, Jamie, as he finds his wife, Claire, bound and tied after suffering the terrible trauma of rape and beatings. She is bruised beyond recognition, almost incoherent. He’s come with his clansmen to rescue her.

He finds her trussed up on the ground and recognizes the trauma she has undergone, though not knowing the specifics of it, and he kneels down next to her. But the first words out of his mouth aren’t questions of her welfare. He knows how she is.

Instead he looks directly into her eyes and says You are alive. You are whole.

Those words went right into my bones.

I can picture Chuck speaking these words to me, if he’d been able to speak to me after his death.

He would have been calm, though emotions would, of course, be raging inside of him, seeing how depleted and devastated and traumatized I was, because of his death.

But he would have known that what I needed from him was calm, and confidence and assuredness for me and he would have spoken aloud to me these very words.

He would have said to me…he would say to me even now…you are alive. You are whole.

Words contrary to how I felt, to how I feel in this life without him, because he would know that he needed to give me an anchor. Something to ground me. Whether I believed his words or not wouldn’t matter.

In this time 7 years later, whether I believe those words for myself or not…it doesn’t matter.

I always trusted Chuck. Always. Never doubted a word he said or a promise he made to me.

So I would believe him, even if I didn’t believe them for myself.

If he were to speak these words to me today, I would believe him still.

I don’t feel alive.

I don’t feel whole.

But I conjure Chuck in my mind and my heart and my soul and I close my eyes and I hear him say these words to me, his tone strong and firm so that they draw my spirit towards him, as he crouches down next to my bruised and battered and exhausted spirit, his hand resting lightly on my shoulder, but not yet putting his arm around me because he knows it is my spirit that needs to stand strong, without the interference of his energy…

You are alive.

You are whole.

These words are my mantra throughout the days I live without him, and the nights I sleep alone. Chuck whispers these words to me even as I whisper them to myself.

I am alive.

I am whole.

I am alive.

I am whole.

Outlander.

It makes me remember me and Chuck.

It makes me remember me.

It enfolds me in its’ pages and reminds me who I am.

Alive.

And whole.

Funny, isn’t it, what influence a book can have on one’s life~

 

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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