From Riches to Rags, and the Glory I Found There

  I usually hate the phrase "learning to love myself". In general, out in the world, it seems to mean that you're asking for a pass to act however you want. Because you have to "love yourself". No thanks, I hate that aspect of it. But I have been confronted with that phrase SO many times during my healing journey. Because I became someone I never thought that I would have the be. My entire worldly identity was rewritten in one moment and, if I being honest...I wasn't happy with who I became. Mainly because loving the new me felt like a betrayal of the old me. Confusing, huh? It's just such a paradox...and it felt infinitely confusing and complicated at every turn. I had to be brave and move forward... I had to be strong and remember... I had to carry legacies and let go of the past... No one could tell me how exactly to go about it, and honestly, I felt so very different than the widows who'd walked this path before me. I felt misunderstood and broke...

  I discovered something about myself recently... I discovered that I'm actually terrified of making new friends.  I've never actually been that great at making new friends, in general, if I'm being honest. It's always been a joke between one of my best friends and myself, she makes the new friends and I just ride the coattails of her bravery.  But, before John died, I had actually started making very intentional efforts towards making and cultivating new friendships. I was doing it, making new friends, talking to strangers at parks, inviting them to play groups. Me! I was doing that. Then John died. And I forgot that I even knew how to make new friends. Because I shut myself up in my own little world and I stopped cultivating anything new. I couldn't bare it, you know, building something new. Because it took all of my efforts to keep my world alive, I couldn't introduce something new to the chaos that was my world for a time.  Sometime after life had settle bac...

  I never realized how highly I thought of myself before John died. How secure I was in who I was. Being happily married for so long and having healthy relationships with God, my family, and my friends made me feel like I was something truly special. John told me often how beautiful and attractive he found me. But who I was, at my core, that's what was really special...when you got me to open up, when you allowed me to shine, when you just gave me a chance. Living in a world without John has been an eye opening experience. Being on my own in every aspect of life is something I was never prepared for. There are just so many people I meet in so many different scenarios and sometimes it all feels so overwhelming. What if they don't give me a chance? What if I don't actually shine anymore? What if trauma has dulled me? What if grief has changed me to my very core? More and more I am learning how I am different now. I used to live life without walls and used to love so deeply an...

  If you know me well you know that physical touch is most definitely NOT my "love language". It never has been.  I appreciate a short and sweet hug as a greeting or farewell to someone I rarely see...key word: rarely . I hug people because I know it is what they need from me. I can appreciate that physical touch is the love language of so many others. I can appreciate the fact that the family culture that some people have involves consistent hugging. And I am so very willing to provide people with that form of connection. I think that it is a naive to believe that we should only expect people to reach out to us in our specific love language without putting emphasis on reaching out to others in the ways that they are naturally inclined to receive love in. It is also naive to not accept love when it is given in someone else's love language...to them that means something very significant. They are loving you in the way they wish to be loved. It's a treasure. And so I n...

  Today I stood alone in my empty home and I allowed the silence to surround me. I stood in the empty halls of the house that I forced to become a home after my home died and I let the silence speak to me. All the while begging it to be gentle... Please don't ask more of me than I can give. Please do not remind me to be strong.  Please do not force me to be brave. Sometimes I feel like I am one breath away from giving up. One breath away from being asked to take on too much. One breath away from failing at everything that this life has demanded of me. I was never afraid of being alone before John died. I knew that, no matter what happened in our world, we would always have each other. Unfortunately, that sacred unity was destroyed on a small, two lane back road in Virginia...and the security I believed I had in life was destroyed along with it.  Guys, I'm not really all that brave. I'm terrified. I'm terrified so much the time.  I'm scared that I'm just going to...

  I read a romance novel this week. Romance was always my favorite genre to read. I loved love. I loved the journey that the characters took to find each other, to find their person. Because I knew, intimately, how it felt to find your person. To be fully known and fully loved, just as you are.  But...my romance turned into my tragedy... The irony being that if I had never loved, and been loved, so deeply, I would never have hurt so deeply. It was a cheesy romance. The kind that has you guessing the end about 30 pages in. But it still holds some simple joys. The meet cute, the animosity turned into interest, the understanding that they each have depths the other didn't see at first, the realization that they found their person, some silly misunderstanding that breaks them apart, and the climax that reunites them in declarations of forever and undying love.  Forever... Undying love... It was actually painful when I read that book...vividly remembering what I had and what I...

  There are aspects of life as a widow where I took the bull by the horns and simply handled it...I took care of things. I still am taking care of things. But there are some aspects of life that I simply let fall by the wayside. Seemingly unimportant things. Things that just no longer mattered because my husband was dead. Things like our deep freezer... Months before John's death we got together and organized our deep freezer. We made a master list of all the food that was in it. All the freezer meals I made. All the ingredients we prepped. We got so organized so that we could continue living and eating healthily and wisely, especially amidst the pandemic.  I have not touched any of it since John died.  Nothing. I literally allowed an entire deep freezer of perfectly good food go completely to waste because I couldn't bring myself to open that door. Cooking meals was never my favorite chore. But I was always willing to provide John with a good meal after a long day at his...

If you asked me the phrase that I say most often to men on dating apps it's this: I'm not most men's cup of tea.  Nine times out of ten, men think I'm referring to my looks. Listen, I may not be a bombshell, but I'm not some sort of troll. And, if a man "likes" me on a dating app I assume he at least finds me passably good looking. So, no, I'm not disparaging my looks to random men on the internet...but thanks for assuming I think so little of myself, men of the dating world.  I am also not just fishing for compliments from strangers. I decided a long time ago that I wouldn't find my worth in what men think of me, and I still stand by that. But men often think that I'm playing coy and simply try to compliment their way out of a potentially awkward situation. I hate insincere compliments. I get why men throw them out...I really do. But I'm just not looking for a man who says the same generic thing to every woman he chats with on the internet...

I have often wondered how my daughter must feel about my family's relationship with my late husband. She never got to meet him. She came into our family after the harshest of grieving had happened, 7 months after he died. She still saw us mourn him and miss him...but she never knew him. And there is such a travesty in that. He would have loved her beyond comprehension...and I have no doubt that she would have connected with him far quicker than she has with me.  "I wish I could have met John...I think he would have been a great dad." Me too, babe, me too. He really would have been amazing. I am so incredibly sorry that he never had the opportunity to father her. Because it would have been amazing to behold...I just know it. But I also am just so thankful that she did not have to lose him...that her heart did not have to bear that brokenness as well...silver linings and all that. She still lost him, but much more indirectly than the rest of us. She lost him without the tra...