BEING FOR ONE ANOTHER

Today I had a call with another widow who is confronting what society and the culture tell her she should be doing. She is dealing with the challenge that most of us face over and over and over again as we deal with how others relate to us and what they expect of us. 

There is no "bouncing back" here. Bouncing back is for recovering from an automobile accident or a battle with a scary disease that took us out temporarily. It is for those times when we lost a job, or a promotion, or perhaps an election. It is for those times when we put our heart and soul into a project or an event and the weather rained it out, or nobody came, or something else undermined the success we worked hard to achieve. 

Bouncing back has nothing to do with surviving and thriving after the death of a spouse. It has nothing to do with getting 'back to normal" when widowhood has taken from you the one person that was woven through the fabric of your life. There is no "getting back to normal" any more than there is "bouncing back" from losing a spouse and being left in the world of widowhood. 

The problem for us is that most of the people we encounter have no frame of reference for what we are dealing with other than "bouncing back" or "getting back to normal." They think that is what we need to do to get on with life and start to create new adventures and new experiences without our spouse. So, they just do what they know to do - they encourage us to get back at it - whatever "it" is - and start to live a normal life again. 

I get it! That's the only frame of reference they have. The only way they know to encourage us not to get bogged down in the loss. It is the only path they can see to a new experience of life because they only have their view and they don't know how to see through our eyes. It becomes a bigger challenge for us because there is also no way to really explain what we are truly dealing with to them. They have no frame of reference. They have no way of understanding what it looks like from here. No matter how good their intentions are, they can't know what it looks like to have your life - and every single thing it is - irrevocably altered in a way that cannot be repaired. 

Widows helping widows navigate this new territory is the main reason I write this blog. I also want those of you who have never had to deal with this experience to begin to get a glimpse of what it looks like on the inside of widowhood looking out at the world. 

I am beginning to understand why there are so many organizations of widows out there that just provide a social environment allowing women who have had this experience to just be with each other and let their guard down for a while. We might want to create more of that opportunity as part of our journey. Being with each other, supporting each other, affirming the journey for each other, is a great gift we can give by just showing up. 

Let's open the door to each other and share the journey.