My Journey Continues

I most recently took a break from my life and went on a trip to Spain.   After severe grief for 783 days since Dean passed, 762 days since Dad passed and 156 days since Tia left my world, I thought a vacation might change the energy of my chronic anguish.   I have to say, leaving town put my emotional state on pause, with occasional bursts of tears that I hid behind my sunglasses and from well intentioned eyes.   The excitement of visiting a country of my heritage was a distraction and I crossed one more thing off my bucket list.   I didn’t intentionally block my feelings, but focused on all that was new and exciting around me. I wanted to feel alive and happy.   The visit to my father’s ancestor’s homeland was amazing and magical.   But after eighteen days, I was ready to come home. As I merged back into my normal routine, I was frustrated that sadness had seeped back into my soul.   I felt I had turned a corner on my emotional ...

W hat no one told me after losing my husband to brain cancer, was that as a widow, I would go through a (for lack of better word) horny phase. Yes, I said it. Women over fifty still get randy! It was a few months after his passing when the longing for my deceased husbands tangible touch, scent, taste and feel was still in the yearning phase. I would meditate to remember his essence and what it was like to be with him. That would get me all fired up with nowhere to go. It was too early to try and date, because once around other men, it was still repulsive to think of being with someone new. Of course, there is guilt about being loyal and faithful…to a man that is no longer alive. I know, its not rational. Nothing much is when it comes to grief. Flash forward over two years…and here I am. Ready as I can be, trying out the dating scene. Everything is different. The texting, online presence, the expectations and worst of all, the catfishing. The fake profiles are everywhere,...

Since death descended into my life I never dealt with the emotion, anger.  When I sank low into depression, I was told by my therapist that it was OK to be angry.   "Get mad!  Let it out! Scream, swear or punch a wall."  She said. "The thing is...I don't feel mad." I countered.  "I know my daughter and husband didn't want to die, so how can I be angry?  Its not their fault." But two years later, waves of anger are just starting to overtake me randomly when I least expect it.  The burning feeling of white, hot, infuriating indignation washes into my brain and numbs my face and lips. The smallest thing sets me off and I will clench my teeth together and scream inside my brain.  Visibly shaking, mentally yelling. Silence. Tears...always tears, rolling down my face. Sometimes, if I'm home alone, my body will freeze and my mouth will howl as hard and as loud as it can until my lungs hurt.  No one can hear me and I don't feel better....

One of the emotions that most recently floods my being on a random basis is loneliness. I may choose to fight or embrace it depending on my mood. Loneliness is described in Wikipedia as an unpleasant emotion brought on by a response to isolation.  I don't FEEL isolated and I've never been REALLY lonely before, but I am still trying to peel the skin off how it makes me truly feel.  Every morning I wake up to silence and pause for a moment to listen.  I hear the air inhaling and exhaling from my body, the rain or wind gently blowing against the window, or the in-explainable sounds that a house makes as it breathes.  I never used to notice these vibrations in time, listening instead for my husbands puttering in the kitchen as he made coffee or emptied the dishwasher.  The lack of sound that another living body is near me, reminds me that I am alone and he is gone. Silence, in itself, tells me to listen to my own voice, inside my head.  Who am I?...

My grief is constantly morphing and shaping itself into this omnipotent, invisible force that always has presence around me. My mind is the creator but I have no control of my emotions once I have manifested that sorrow.  The loss is real but unseen, and no one else can feel the pain. That, in itself, is the isolation in which I live. Members of the grief club do not go around wearing an equivalent to Hester’s scarlet A on their chest. I am part of an invisible club. Lately, I stay busy with friends and errands, managing to go several days feeling what I guess I can call, normal…happy, but then inevitably, I am alone, and I remember.  The visceral pain hits my gut and floods my body and brain with an ache of longing so intense, I can’t catch my breath.  Tears are my only outlet and stream forth unwanted and wet. They are messy, snotty and tiresome. Early on, my weeping was silent, sporadic, and personal. I seldom shared them with anyone, because ...

T oday, I struggle.   It’s 9:30 am on a Tuesday, most of the world is busy going to work, sleeping, eating…just living or being productive.   Instead, I sit on my bed, wearing my late husband’s pajama bottoms, t-shirt and sweater, frozen, silently weeping off and on.   I continue to find it strange that life continues to revolve around me as nothing has changed, when my world is so completely different. I look at my husband’s urn that sits on my dresser.   I despise that his body is in there, where I can’t smell his skin or touch his face or hug his body. Knowing that he is burnt to ash and can never be alive again kills me.   I scream at the urn, I HATE that you left me, how DARE you…I miss you…. I look outside my bedroom window; the sun is out, but the warmth emanating is weak, as the temperature is just above freezing.   The beauty of the clear blue sky is small consolation for my sadness. Recently, I discovered Abraham Hicks, the motiva...

I lived in a home filled with fear and anger. I was young, eighteen, living with my first boyfriend, who most recently had become physically abusive. My induction to love was an extension of my relationship with my father. Always reaching for the unattainable, never receiving the approval I was looking for. I was starved, subconsciously looking for male attention. With my father, I never existed. But with this man, I sought to hide. I was coming in from work one evening, being the sole provider, while he had been laid off his most recent construction job. “Hey!” “How was your day?” I asked him closing the front door. “Fine.” He said abruptly barely looking up. I watched him rub my face cream, that I had worked overtime to purchase, into his hands and arms. “Please don’t use that moisturizer on your hands.” I asked “It was expensive and it’s meant for the face.” Suddenly, I felt and heard the jar whizz closely past my left ear, then smash into the door behind...