6 Months of Grief Project: Day 13

I Am an Animal

This is Day 13 of my #6MonthsOfGrief Project. To learn more about this practice, feel free to visit Day One, where I explain this project in more detail.

My husband was obsessed with costumes. He designed them, created them and performed in them on a regular basis. When he passed away, I had to pick and choose the few special pieces I wanted to keep and had to give away or sell the rest. He was really in to vintage mascot heads and the one I'm wearing in today's photo was my gift to him on one of his birthdays. I actually successfully hid this from him for two months in our tiny house!

When I put it on, I can feel him so strongly - his breath, his beard, his sweat, his laughter. I think he would have gotten a big kick out of me wearing a bikini and his favorite furry head, so today's picture is for him. I miss you, Justin.

I am very aware that this project can bring up a lot around yours or other's grief and loss, I will always follow every post with some online grief support resources that have helped me. Please feel free to let me know of online support that you have found healing in your grief, as well:

Art with Grief:

• Photographer [Sarah Treanor] Takes Moving Self-Portraits to Cope with Her Fiance's Death by Jillian Wong
• Self-Portraits: Expressing Emotion Through Art on What's Your Grief?
• The Hard Romance of Grief by Mark Liebenow
• The poetry of John O’Donohue

Resources for Widows:

• Camp Widow
• Soaring Spirits International

Living with Grief Resources:

• Grief Bibliography on Grief Healing
• A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit

• Megan Devine’s Refuge in Grief

• The Geography of Sorrow: Francis Weller on Navigating Our Loses, interviewed by Tim McKee in Sun Magazine
• How to Be a Friend in Deed by Bruce Feiler in the New York Times

• 12 Things to Know About the First Year of Grieving Someone You Can’t Live Without by Laurie Costanza in Elephant Magazine

Thank you, and see you tomorrow.