Wow,
So much has happened to me during the last nine months, a little like birthing a baby.
I remember when I was widowed people swore, life will change, it will get better. And, indeed it has.
The changes started to come as I eased my way away from my identity as “widow” and tried on different roles and identity.
I think back now and how whenever I had contact with people I would preface that contact with the statement that I was a widow. I guess I wanted them to know that place I was coming from. The pain I was experiencing.
And now, it’s the season, yet again. The season that screams out family, together, closeness. And, although I never would have believed it this is my fourth Christmas without my late husband and I am not feeling that profound emptiness, meaningless, and pain that seemed to wash over the three previous holiday seasons.
Much has changed but getting very, very ill last summer was my ultimate “wake-up call.” I spent over 2 weeks in the hospital with an “hole in my lung” and met my life face to face. A wonderful friend said that perhaps this illness was a way for me to burn out all the bad “karma” which had happened over the previous few years.
After my late husband died my mantra was, “he died, I didn’t” but now as I look back perhaps a part of me died, and my illness last summer brought me face to face with that psychic death. I affirmed my will to live late one night in the hospital as I contemplated all my blessings, all the new people who had entered into my life.
You see, my widowhood brought along with it a lot of resentment, pain and anger. I believe that resentment, pain and anger bubbled away in me. I looked for “slights” I looked for the people who were no longer in my life, I looked for ways in which I had been wronged by people who had formerly been my friends.
Now I realize that seething over what I perceived to be slights did nothing but increase my pain. Instead I began to focus on the new people who brought joy into my life, appreciated the old friends who stayed by my side, and opened up my world to new adventures and new growth.
So, now I am back ready to be there for those facing widowhood only now I am another year wiser, have eliminated self pity that accompanied slights both real and imagined.
This is a wonderful season of darkness. A time to go within, contemplate, and emerge anew.
This is also a time to remember that pain does not go on forever, and that there are many new and wonderful adventures awaiting each and every one of us.
Here’s to a really new year.
Blessings
