The Power of We

My New We

Today is Blog Action Day 2012. The theme this year is "The Power of We".

Thinking about the word we brought back a vivid memory of the first few weeks after my husband Dave's death. I remember suddenly noticing how often I still said we.

I had many visitors in those first few weeks. I would hear myself telling them "We are getting new siding," or "We grew corn this summer but not last summer," or "We were going to go to Italy again," and the word we would punch me in the stomach, leaving me winded and nauseous.

My we had turned to me in an instant and my heart and mind hadn't had a chance to understand. The power of the loss of my we was immense and crushing. Almost a year and a half later and I'm still trying to understand it.

My we used to consist of Dave and me.  He was my family, my husband, my best friend, my biggest fan and the person I trusted most in this world. And then I became just me. Overnight.

Everything was still there. His shoes, his wallet, his phone, his email account. But he was missing and so was the me I had been when he'd been here on this earth.

He had been dead for less than 3 months when I went to San Diego for Camp Widow. I was 35 years old and was completely consumed with the need to find my new we.

I vividly remember the feeling I had as the escalator at that Marriott brought me to the second floor where Camp Widow check in was taking place. I looked around at all the people milling about and thought "They're all like me," and I swear I took a deep breath for the first time in 3 months.

I was comforted just by the knowledge that I was surrounded by my new we. It wasn't anything like my old we and it couldn't replace my old we.

It didn't make the pain of his loss any less devastating, but it was power in numbers, and I didn't feel alone anymore. That first camp was the beginning of my re-entry into life.

When I returned home, I would picture all of those people I'd met, doing incredible things, like Michele Neff Hernandez, starting the foundation that allowed me to find my new we in the wreckage of Dave's death, and Matt Logelin, finding strength in his daughter and getting his beautiful love story to her and her mom out into the world and I borrowed their light at the end of the tunnel. I couldn't see mine yet, so I used theirs.

When I was sure I couldn't withstand the pain of grieving the loss of my old we, I would call someone I met at Camp, and even from several states (and a country) away they would extend a strong hand through the dark and pull me out into the light, reminding me that we were in this together at least for that moment.

When I'd do the same for them, I felt a connection almost as strong as any I'd felt before. It was as though I could suddenly feel the invisible cords from my heart to theirs, extending hundreds of miles, allowing strength to surge back and forth between us, as needed.

My identity from my before-life was gone, but my new identity was a WE again. A different we.

We widowed people are warriors.
We are heroes, the kind of people who have power from the depths they've clawed their way out of to find the light.
We are a force to be reckoned with.
We know intimately the true value of love and the impermanence of life.

I don't know if I'd truly understand that if it weren't for SSLF and Camp Widow.

Just the simple but incredible act of communicating online with widows from all over the world through this blog is a we that spans the globe and includes millions of people in its web of connections.

My neighbor, two doors down, just lost his wife to cancer and in my condolence card to him, I included one of the SSLF outreach cards I carry around. So, I've cast the net over him, too, including him in this we. Hopefully, he will not feel as alone just knowing that there's a we out there for him, too, whenever he needs it.

SSLF allowed me to have a we again, during a phase in my life that could have been isolating and horrifically lonely.

The power of we, indeed.

Booster Shot

source

There is a question that always makes me freeze up. It's not "Are you married?", although that's a rotten one, too. It's "What do you do?".

I think it rattles me so much because it gets right to the heart of my biggest source of fear - that I no longer know what I'm going to do with my life. My identity is still forming in this new life of mine. In this life I'm only 16 months old and I haven't had enough time to figure much out. So, when someone says "what do you do?" I feel like saying "try to put my life back together".

People want to put other people in categories. I know I do it all the time. I want to know when I meet you if you're a teacher or a lawyer or a librarian or a chef. If you tell me "I don't know", I'm not going to be able to categorize you right away and that makes most of us a little uncomfortable.

When I asked a woman I met yesterday what she does and she replied with "Oh, that question is so hard," my fellow-widow alarm went off and sure enough she told me what she used to do and then said "but my husband died a year and a half ago, and now I don't know what I'm going to do," It was like hearing myself talking.

"MY husband died a year and a half ago!" I replied, suddenly fired up with the recognition of someone else who might truly get me.

And whoo boy, did she get me. She told me about her lovely husband and how he died and I told her about Dave and how he died. As we discussed our observations of this new journey we're  on, I felt understood and recognized and truly heard. The veil of loneliness dropped away and I felt the ease of not having to pretend to be okay or find words for feelings nearly unexplainable.

We talked about how year two is harder than year one, and what to do with ashes and how to find ways to sleep well again. We talked about how, in our society, people often don't seem to be versed in dealing with the bereaved because it's a taboo subject in daily life. We compared notes on how sharing our widowed status often sends people nearly running from us in discomfort.

Meeting someone else on this journey always feels a lot like being thrown a life ring, or at the very least, having someone join me in the waves so I don't feel so terrifyingly alone as I tread water. 

I gave her one of my SSLF cards with my phone number and email address and told her about Camp Widow and I felt the urge to scoop up all the other widowed people out there and move in together.

That would be an idea that my therapist would say is "over-identifying with my widowhood" but it's normal to want to feel as though I belong and I haven't felt that way much since Dave died.

I know that I won't always feel as though I don't belong outside of the time I spend with my widowed friends. I get that.

I also know that right now, the feeling of belonging is so comforting that I need a little injection of it on a daily basis to keep my strength up.

A little fellow-widow booster shot.

Life Ring

from here

My dear friend introduced me to a friend of hers today. At dinner, I learned that his brother was widowed in March. As in this March. As in less than 3 months ago. He's 43, without kids, and now without his wife.

I listened to the horrible story of how she died suddenly and how he found out. I tried to picture that man in those first few moments and days and the images were so closely bound up with my own sensory memories that for a few minutes I couldn't separate myself from the situation.

The intense pain of those first few months flooded through me and I juggled urges to detach just enough to avoid falling apart at the seams and to connect enough to empathize.

And then, something kicked in. Something so gratifying that it filled me up and shot out of me like light. I realized that I was the one who might actually be able to bring resources to this man who has just lost his best friend.

I took a piece of paper and a pen out of my purse and began to make a list for this man. I wrote SSLF, Camp Widow, Widow's Voice, my own blog, my own email, and my widowed friends' blog addresses. I tried to express what made it harder for me in the beginning and what made it easier.

It's difficult now to explain how this felt. I suppose, like Chris Weaver says, it's like throwing a rope to someone who's drowning. There's such relief in knowing that as long as he takes a hold of the life ring at the end of that rope, he can make it. There was a visceral sense of satisfaction that felt like energy filling my chest and heart.

There was an urgency, too. I wanted to gather the troops and find this man a few states away and get started. I wanted to physically put him on a plane to Camp Widow in San Diego in August and just say "TRUST ME" as the plane takes off. I wanted to surround him with my widowed friends and say "Look. This is the face of widowhood. We survive. We thrive. We come out of this stronger. It's possible. Don't give up."

I will not tell anyone to do anything they're not ready to do and I know from hard-won experience how difficult it is to hear "you shoulds" from anyone else during this process. Everyone is so different and grieving is just as varied. I have no right to tell this man what to do, but oh how I want to tell him to reach out. I want him to want to reach out. But most of all, I want to make him see that he's not as alone as he probably thinks he is.

I also felt some relief knowing that this man now had a concrete way to help his brother with this information I'd given him. It is so hard to know how to help someone who has suffered such a loss. I saw the strain of that in my loved one's faces after Dave died. I know that they all wanted to do what they could to help me and that they were unprepared.

None of us had ever gone through anything remotely like it before and yet they taught me how to do the most incredible job at helping a newly widowed person. And now, in a small way, I could pay that forward by sharing how they helped me most -- making arrangements, taking calls, bringing meals, sitting with me while I cried, taking my lead, the list goes on for days.

As my one year mark grows near, I think more and more about how my loved ones and I have formed this incredible web of love to survive this event. It holds me up and sustains me.

I don't believe in the stereotypical image of a winged angel from heaven. I believe in something better - angels right here on earth. Human, fallible, beautiful, mortal, loving human angels. Any of us can be an angel at any time. It just takes reaching out in case someone might be drowning. It takes gently but firmly tugging on them until they can swim out of the currents on their own.

I hope I can help someone even a fraction as much as my friends have helped (and continue to help) me.

Re-entry

I spent last weekend at Camp Widow East and re-entering my regular life was harder than I'd anticipated.

The long travel day to get back home was exhausting and I missed my camp friends terribly. I spent the day alternately crying in public (a lot) and forcing the tears to stop long enough to function in the airports.*

The first time I went to camp I had only lived this life for 2 months and was still deeply in shock. I left feeling as though I'd found my people and the hope it would take to get me through.

And nothing was different about that this time. However, with less shock to buffer me now, I could more acutely feel how hard it was to return to "real life" and be, once again, the widow among non-widows. And, on top of that, I've been feeling like that pain is attached to the pain of also being an orphan and of having grown up missing the kind of love I so desperately needed. All the pain is linked like a rope I follow back to its source.

While I was at camp, I didn't even have to explain myself. I could look at another comrade and know they knew. And that I knew that they knew that I knew. Now (again), I find myself trying to explain how all of this feels and I don't have an adequate vocabulary. There is no way to fully explain this to those who haven't traveled this particular road and that can create a void.

I'm struggling with that. Combine that with not knowing what I'm going to do with my life and feeling unmoored, and I just long to feel secured to something, someone. I long for the feeling of absolute safety that Dave's presence gave me. I felt, from the day I met him, that I could depend on him completely. I felt watched over, protected and safe.

Now, all of that is up to me and I wish I felt a little more capable. But I keep pushing forward because that's what has to happen. I cling to my widowed friends' support, advice, and example.

At camp I saw, everywhere I looked, examples of people who experienced a loss this huge and continue to smile, laugh, live, love. I was held up when I couldn't stand from sobbing. I was protected and loved by all those fellow travelers.

That is why I keep coming back to camp. Nothing has made quite the impact on me like finding my "people". From the first few days after Dave died, I knew instinctively how badly I'd need to find others who'd been through this. And I did.

So, thank you Michele Neff Hernandez (and the rest of SSLF, of course!) for creating this refuge for us. Thank you for reminding me that pain like this can often result in incredible acts of love and healing for so many.

It's probably not much of an overstatement to say you've helped save my life. I just kind of wish that Camp was my normal life and "real life" was just a fleeting weekend once a year.** Can someone arrange that for me? Super. Thanks.

*Thanks to a phone call from a new friend made at camp, though, I actually laughed a little, too.  (Hi, Whitney!)

 **But I'll be there in August and I hope to see as many of you there as possible. If you haven't been before, you will be so grateful you chose to go. Please go. Please give yourself this gift of hope. And please find me and say hi!