Recovering - Resilience and Strength
Personal Strength
Personal strength is NOT how you can dominant others or yell; NOR is personal strength measured by the number of hurts you have experienced.
Strength is the number of times you get up after life's hurts (or tragedies), brush yourself off, grow in wisdom, while pushing forward to experience life. While trying as best as you can to have grace (forgiving yourself when you stumble). This type of strength embodies resilience, maturity, bravery and the realization that we are in this life to experience it fully. Not to run and hide.
Yes. Oh yes - developing this type of personal strength is brutally hard, but ..... it can't be handed to you. Only you can chose to grow into strength. As humans we are resilient. We are capable of doing hard things. And as you grow your number of Survived Days - different from perfect days - you become more confident that you'll survive, that you are capable, and that you can envision hope.
(Survived Days – a mix of self care, productivity, down time, the mundane, and tucking yourself into bed at the end of the day).
The Path Chosen
Survival
My life partner had died leaving me in deep Grief. But somehow in those early days, I was highly conscious of the fact that my chosen life-path, from that step forward, would be the foundation of the remaining years of my life.
I needed to cling to I must think for myself
I needed to understand the What now?
I felt hyper aware that on one hand I was grieving, but simultaneously, was developing a vigilance for what must be coming next. Akin to being on a high vantage point, watching a highway, acutely searching for what was coming in the distance. In this contextual awareness, I was adapting my thinking to that of a new widow - what skills would I need to survive? While being engulfed by the tsunami of Grief.
Intuitively I sensed that - if I gave my life over to dependency, medications, alcohol, isolation - I’d miss the life fork in the road wandering down a path that might be hard to alter. In my experience, I strongly felt that "Giving it 6 Months" (somehow a magical time frame for grieving out there in society) would situate me too far down that black abyss. Crawling back to the light and survival would be more difficult. I was worried that dependency and self destruction would set in.
And so, in my early stage of Grief I discovered I could both honor and mourn my husband, while also barring colossal Grief and loss from destroying me. Keeping my hands on the wheel was a blessed distraction. I was able to grieve but I was also able to function, maintain a semblance of myself. I was able to sense that I still had a purpose.
This saved my life.
Caution dear read, this is the story of me - a case study of one, if you will. My experience. As I have said elsewhere on this site, you need to chose your own path. I will leave you with these words. In trauma and sudden loss and Grief, a new era of my life was forced upon me. And while my days were filled with blackness, hopelessness, crying, begging, confusion,.... I was also somehow curious. Curious about why I was experiencing this trauma. I wanted to explore why life had thrown me this curve. It was clearly at a turning point in my journey. I wanted to venture through the experience head on, with my eyes wide open, rather than detour around, in a self medicated fog.
My story. A case study of one
You have your own story. A case study of one.
May you find the strength. Trust in yourself.
Trust that life can offer not just experiences of intense loss, but also incredible new windows. Aha moments. Surprises.
Remember, we can do hard things. When we are called upon.
My heart moving towards the light
There can be a new life....
There can be a new life....
There can be a new life....
It is universally accepted that children need love,
but at what age are people supposed to stop needing it? We never do.
We need love in order to live happily, as much as we need oxygen in order to live at all.
Marianne Williamson
I am writing this from a vantage point of a few years out from my husband's death. And while I still grieve, I have opened my heart to new possibilities. Facing forward to a new relationship can be scary and guilt-ridden but also life-affirming. Family and friends are generally supportive but, in their own personal grief for the person lost, are also cautious. They want happiness for me, but also want safety. These family and friends were first-hand witnesses to the crushing tragedy I endured, and do not want to see me hurt.
For me, at a point in time that felt somewhat safe - I ventured forward from:
- the grieving widow, focused inward in pain, pining for what was,
- to someone who was jolted awake to realize, YES, I'm still alive, breathing, and this new person in front of me could be someone who opens my heart.
Back and forth I went between the guilt and the new feelings of love. Until at last I was able to trust, settle, and give way to feelings of joy. Not a linear path. Not perfect. But this journey was a choice, that included tears, counsel and bravery.
I have discovered that holding deep love for one person, does not negate having deep love for another. And that has truly been a beautiful and blessed realization. The concept of a heart with finite space for love - blown apart and reimagined.
The following passage was written in the early days after meeting the person who was to become the next chapter of my life. I hope, for those of you grieving a lost Love, can find some comfort, some possibilities, some hope, in these words. Even if these words feel lightyears away from your current point on your journey.
Let's call him Tony
There can be a new life....
There can be a new life....
"Tony".... You saved my life and you don’t even know it. I’m not exaggerating or trying to be funny (I actually no longer know how to be funny). So YES - you, dear man, saved my life.
So many days my mind literally needed to shut off feelings of grief, terror and hopelessness to rest its focus on you. You, my unexpected surprise. A new friend, a new comforting harbor for my battered heart. Your appearance in my life was so completely unexpected, bewildering, shocking,… how did this happen?
I am riddled with guilt, ...Is this OK? What will people think? Am I being unfaithful? But also, like a young child, terrified, peaking out from a hiding place under the bed,... I'm curious. What is this new feeling? Who is this person?
And as I have rested my focus on you. You, my unexpected surprise - I have found my heart split into two. I don’t mean broke in two. I mean, full on Mitosis! My heart, akin to the process of one-cell division, divided, not to create two smaller pieces, but two equally large pieces, - so that my heart was able to feel love for two people fully. As in mitosis, my old one-cell worn out, broken heart was replaced. Through this tragedy of losing my husband, my heart inexplicably has new life.
My heart now somehow still contains that messy, wrenching, painful love,.. that will remold over time, to an enduring love, for someone that meant the world to me.
And simultaneously, by you, my new friend, my heart has been claimed; this newly formed “second” heart, is also full of love but in this case it’s a messy, still-being-figured-out love, and one that looks forward, not backwards. It’s part of my new and surprising and wonderful future world.
By just being you, nothing more, you have pulled me up from a black abyss to see that there is still light, still hope.
Another soul is connecting with mine, even if just in a dream.
where Grief no longer holds sway
A Story. A once upon in time
Love of rhythm, comfort and rhyme
Then red and warmth faded in dusk
Suddenly, this Love no longer mine
From grips of Grief, sought to be free
Hovering over life, no longer me
End notes writ, final cadence signed
Blind to hope, to what could be
Grieving bride, what do people say
To honor, must I in blackness stay
Or with bravery, face what could be
Could tomorrow be better than today
You took a chance, you held my hand
A specter, a dream, or just a man
My heart awoken, my pain to wane
With winged hope, you took a stand
Guide me to life, walk with me
A claimed soul. What do angels see
Am I allowed to seek, heal, love
From life, no longer needing to be free
Beloved, I need you to understand
My heart can heal, grow, expand
That I can love both you, gone before
And with courage, this one at hand
Facing forward, I accept this new day
Enveloped in your arms, aching to stay
Can we together now discover joy
Where Grief no longer holds sway
Playlist
Alan Parson Project. (1982).
Old and Wise.
Eye in the Sky. (Album).
5 For Fighting. (2004).
Only 100 yrs.
The Battle For Everything. (Album).
Lee Ann Womack. (2000).
I Hope You Dance.
Sons of the Desert. (Album).
Bryan Adams. (2019).
Let Your Light Shine Through
Shine a Light. (Album).
Bee Gees. (1971).
How Can You Mend a Broken Heart
Trafalgar. (Album).
Cat Stevens. (1971).
Morning Has Broken.
Cat Stevens Greatest Hits. (Album).