Healing Forward

I was talking to a widowed friend the other night about the whole idea of sharing this part of our life and how it changes over time. I remember well the first year after my fiance died. The first thing out of my mouth was this information. I told everyone and anyone. Friends, family, coworkers, customers, the mail man, police officers, the tech support guy, random strangers... No one was safe. I spewed my raw pain out all over the world like a continually erupting volcano. 

My friend did the same. We talked about how at first, it is the only thing we wanted to talk about. It is the only thing that mattered. And for a while, it really did swallow up our identity. And we talked about how we felt like we lost the whole rest of our identity for a time to the label "widow". Which left us both feeling conflicted - simultaneously wanting to be completely defined by our love for this person, and resentful that people now only saw us as a widow.

Then we raised the question: when did that shift? When did we go from the hurling our widowhood at every innocent bystander to becoming extremely protective of this information and very choosy about who we share it with? 

It has happened somewhere in this third year for me. I've begun to re-emerge into life again. And as I have, slowly my desire to be defined as a widow has become less and less. After two years of talking about nothing but death and about him in exhaustion, I am finding that its okay not to talk about it all the time anymore. I'm finding myself wanting to talk about other things that are a part of me; art and writing, new music and travel, fun recipes and healthy living. 

Instead of my widowhood being the first thing I tell people now, it is usually that I am an artist. Sometimes I wait months before sharing with someone new about being widowed. My friend - who's a few years ahead of me on this road - does the same thing. And we wondered, what causes that transition from sharing it with everyone to keeping it more private? 

Our initial answer was that we have just grown tired of the myriad of awkward reaponses we get from people. And tired of being pegged as The Widow. And tired of the unwanted advice. Eventually, it becomes easier to just avoid all that as long as possible. But there were other things we realized too as we discussed it. More positive things. 

We talked about how we were so raw at first that we absolutely needed to talk to anyone and everyone about it. Acute pain needs serious acute talking to begin to heal. Over time, all that sharing and other things we've done for ourselves have helped us to heal to a point where we no longer need to talk about it all the time. So the fact that we can comfortably not talk about it now is a sign that we are healing.

Our desire to be defined by other parts of ourselves has begun to return too. This horrible, unspeakable thing happened to us, but it is NOT who we are. So somewhere in this year 3-5 area, we each found a desire to reclaim and rediscover who we are now. 

We also talked about how difficult that transition is. How we each felt scared that we were leaving our partner behind if we began to talk about them less or reenter into life again. How we worried that it would make us lose them all over again. This is what I have struggled with largely most of this year - this push-pull between wanting desperately to fill my life with other things again and feeling guilty about it and scared I'd feel farther from him.

What we both found though, is that it didn't make us feel farther from them at all. In fact it has felt more the opposite for me. This year, I've transitioned into spending more of my time thinking about the present and the future. I've started to accept that I must build a new life of my own and begun to work towards building this life into something happy and meaningful. To my surprise, he has come with me every step of the way.

 It turns out that beginning to live again doesn't mean I have to move on without him. To my relief, it actually seems to be quite impossible to leave him behind. He is so deeply interwoven into the fabric of this new woman I am that I'm finding that nothing can separate us now. He is in everything now - even the new beautiful things and people that weren't part of our life. Especially those in fact, because his death is what has lead me to them... And so it feels like he is always leading me to happiness. It's been a beautiful discovery which has come out of this third year of widowhood. He will always be. 

To Be The Giver

Every once in a while, something slams into us without warning. On a hot summer night two years ago, it was the phone call, with my father-in-law on the other end of the line telling me that the love of my life was in a crash while flying, and he didn't make it. His death slammed into me like two planets colliding.

And then this week, on another hot summer night, I think Robin Williams' death slammed into all of us. I have been surprised by just how deeply this has affected me. I've found myself having the same reaction of disbelief as when my fiancé died. The same outcry from deep inside myself that "No. No. This cannot be real." I've cried multiple times, deep sobs, for the loss of this man who - despite having never even met me - had a huge impact on my life. I grew up with him, watching Mork & Mindy and later Mrs. Doubtfire just about every week. I watched The Birdcage religiously through college - one of my go-to movies whenever I needed a break from all the stress in life. I watched Hook countless times whenever I needed a good dose of wonder and a reminder that life is full of magic. In fact, just a few weeks ago I watched it for just that reason… I watched Robin's childlike eyes light up and it made me believe in wonder and beauty and magic again.

All of this has got me thinking… how many people's lives do we touch that we have no idea about?
How many people's lives do I touch by writing here each week? Or by sharing my artwork about grief and loss? Or by just being kind and a good listener? There are countless people who may never tell us that we touched their lives… but nonetheless we have. And I don't think we ever have a clue just how much impact we have on others by the choices we make and the ways we choose to live our lives and treat others. But this week, this one very special man reminded me of just that. His death reminded me not only of the impact he has had, but of the capacity we ALL have to impact each other, inspire each other, love each other, and make each other laugh. It reminded me that - when I feel most alone - I can think about the little ways I've touched people's lives and know that I probably touched twice as many as I could ever know. We all have. Somehow, it makes things feel less lonely. It makes my heart feel more open and warm.

I don't really know where I'm going with this post. I hadn't planned to write about this today… so I'm letting it take me along for the ride. There has been much to think about this week, but what I am thinking on right now is that one idea: We touch so many more lives than we know. Every single interaction we have is a chance to leave the other person better than we found them. Every. Single. One. To give them laughter they didn't have, comfort they need, most of all - to allow them to feel seen and noticed. We all want to be noticed.

The beautiful thing about being the giver is that it goes both ways. Every time you give to someone else - that love flows right back to you. A selfless act of love for another is one of the most healing and beautiful gifts you can ever give - to them and to yourself.  Most especially in the midst of great loss.

It was death that woke me up to this two years ago, and keeps it in the forefront of my heart now. It is death that continues to remind me each day that every single interaction with another person matters… whether I've known them a decade or a day. It is death that reminds me that the way I live my life matters… and that I matter, probably far more than I will ever realize. 

Turning Pain to Love

In 2012, when his death was so fresh, I needed to talk. About the pain, the fear, the agony, the anger, the loss, the accident, the future we will not have, the children we won't raise, the wedding we won't share… all of it. I wanted to crawl out of my skin with all the pain. I talked and cried almost every single day to someone about my pain. I talked to everyone. Even inappropriately so.

No literally… I have told my story - complete with shameless tears - to perfect strangers. Including customers at the gallery I worked at, a seamstress I had hemming a pair of pants for me, and my masseuse. Really anyone was prey to my grief attacks for about a year there. Sometimes it ended up weird or awkward, but most of the time, it didn't.

Most of the time, it would allow them to share something really vulnerable in their life (the seamstress it turns out was a widow herself many years back, and has since remarried to a wonderful man), or help them simply feel honored that I would trust them enough to share. Almost every time, we both ended up in tears and hugging each other. It turns out, it doesn't really matter if we know each other - we can all give that exchange to one another just by listening and honoring one another where we are.

Looking back, I can begin to understand it this way:
Sharing pain transforms it back into love. I stretch out my arms - with a piece of my pain held in my hands - to someone, to anyone who will have it. It is always a risk that they will not reach back, always, but I know I need to try if my heart is to survive this without becoming hardened. So I reach and I show them my pain. And my hope is that they reach back. And usually, they do. They take that small piece of my pain in their hands. They see it, touch it, come to know it. They turn it over in their hands and take it to their hearts and feel it for a moment. And then they give it back to me, but when it is returned to my hands… miraculously, every time, I find that it is no longer pain at all, but love. They have completely transformed that one small piece - with nothing more than a simple act of acknowledging it, and therefore acknowledging me.

Because our pain, you see, is really just the part of ourselves that has loved fully and deeply and come to be broken. When we give a piece of it to someone, and they receive it with compassion, they can return it back to us as love - as it once was. To me, this has been what healing is about. Taking the chance to be vulnerable and share my pain, bit by bit, day by day… reaching my hands out again and again and again… each time holding a single grain of sand from the desert of pain that resides in my heart. And each time receiving back a single grain of love.

It is a lifelong process, grain by grain. And no, we never do turn all those grains back into love. There will always be some pain amidst our hearts, but looking at it this way helps me to see how every person who has touched my life - and everyone who will - helps me to transform my pain back into love. He did this for me too, well before I was aware. Our vulnerability with each other helped us to turn each other's pain from the days before we met back to love. And now, by the force of his death, I am having to learn a new way to do this. It is time to let others be part of that journey… let them turn my pain back to love, and give the same back to them. I am hoping that by sharing this, it does a little of that for both you and me.

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