HOW TO REBUILD YOUR LIFE AFTER CATACLYSM: ONE

Start.  Repeat.

There are widow lessons.  Here's one: 

How can a widow begin to rebuild her life after the fresh grief agonies have become a numbing norm to be largely ignored and ploughed through? You could say that I made many mistakes in the rebuilding stage of my grief. I don't see it that way, but it's true that I tried many, many ways of being before I found any peace at all. 

For me, my conscious awareness of the need to rebuild came after a very long, deep grief period of more than two years.  I wrote in "The Widow Lessons" (Amazon), that the mind chooses for you which battles to fight. This choice is made when you have two or more BIG fights going on at the same time.  For me, it was my own diagnosis of cancer soon after Ted died.  During my cancer fight, grief took a back seat without being asked, and only returned more than a year later.  Hence, the amount of time it took me to want to even consider a future without Ted was prolonged.  For you, it may be months or decades...every widow's journey is unique.

At any rate, you arrive.  You see a bird or a child or your reflection in a glass.  You have a pin prick of awareness of a life after.  A life beyond.  This is the first inkling you will get that you are beginning to learn to live with your grief, as it is now becoming a big part of who you essentially have become. 

I won't list all my mistakes, because it's a boring list that even I get tired of thinking about.  Some might call it a series of false starts, when I tried many new things and nothing worked out.  I have come to believe that there are only "starts" -- some work out and some don't.  That's my first message to you:  Just let yourself start. Repeat.  Don't even number how many times you start.  The miracle of starting is not made any less miraculous by the ultimate outcome.

When I was ready to move forward (sort of), I reached back into what I was doing when I met Ted, thinking that I may be able to pick that activity up again.  I had been involved in little theater in Columbus, Georgia from age six to age nineteen, when I married Ted.  So, I started a little theater of my own in 2012 called "The Blue Stilly Players".  We had success.  Then, I completely lost interest.  I let it drift away. It didn't fulfill me, sustain me, feel like the right path for me.  I put a lot of money, time and emotion into the endeavor, and then, I just let it die.  But it was a start.

The experience of initiating and developing a little theater company turned out to be too close to being a department head in a government agency, my professional assignment in life at the time.  "The Blue Stilly Players" felt like just another job.  Through a procession of experiments (although I didn't know at the time that is what I was doing), I discovered that I wanted to be a more useful and active part of my family.  I finally figured out that moving to a place that was closer geographically to my children was a step I could take that might bring additional meaning into my life.  By then, I had six grandchildren, and I could be of service to my family, play a useful role, and use this new location as my spring board into future interests.  I saw this step as building on a truth about myself:  I like family life, and I missed it with Ted gone.

Years ago, I had attended Haystack Writing Program on the Oregon Coast.  From one teacher I learned to not tear up my writing and go in a new direction, or alter what I had written in a dramatic way.  "Just take the words on the page, make them the best they can be, and finish what you have written.  Just work with what you've got."  This turned out to be a tip that came back to instruct me after I became a widow. 

When Ted and I were together, building and raising a family and a home, I was present.  I was in it.  It was real. THAT WAS ME.  When the kids grew up and moved away, I still felt intact as a family because Ted and I talked about it all the time, visited our kids all the time, had them over to our home.  Went to wherever they were.  I loved my life because I was part of a family.  That essential part of myself hadn't changed because of Ted's death.  But his death had robbed me of feeling like an essential part of my family.  I needed to end my isolation and move closer to my kids.  That particular start did work out for me.  There have been others since then that didn't take.  Some have taken off and are going strong.    

The how-to takeaway from my post today:

Take a look at your life in it's entirety.  Before the cataclysm.  Through it.  After it.  What can you try out, add, consider, or do to that which is already there.  Be willing and ready to start innumerable times.  You don't need to abandon all those beautiful moments in which you lived fully, happily, unaware of what was to come.  Use them.  Build from there.

Your grief belongs to you.  Your starts belong to you.  You don't have to leave your grief behind to rebuild after you lose your love, your life.  In fact, grief is part of your footprint now.  You can't go anywhere or do anything without it.  Feed every accepting bone in your body, and the parts of yourself that are grief stricken will get boots on in the morning along with the rest of you.  Grief is portable. Start there.