6 Months of Grief Project: Day 21

I've Lost You

This is Day 21 of my #6MonthsOfGrief Project. To learn more about this practice, feel free to visit Day One, where I explain this project in more detail.

I have experienced a lot of loss this month, and it's hitting me extremely hard. One of my closest, collaborative, creative friends moved to Hollywood, suddenly overnight. Another dear friend of 30 years was diagnosed with three forms of cancer and is deep in the process of treatment - an area that is too painful for me to follow right now. Another close friend needed to check-in to a facility to treat his PTSD and I don't have any way of contacting him. I did not realize how much I was leaning on these three men in my life to get through my grief and my sorrow in losing my husband. They were filling a intimate, creative, playful space left open and ragged from the sudden tearing away of my husband and having all three of them essentially disappear within a month of each other has hit me hard. I'm facing an aloneness I had not yet had to face. For a co-dependent lady, this is extremely brutal. I walk alone now, and it breaks my heart.

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

• Teresa “TL” Bruce's What to Say When Someone Dies
• They Brought Cookies: For A New Widow, Empathy Eases Death's Pain by Ann Finkbeiner on NPR
• 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

And remember, I am sharing this project on a variety of platforms, including my Instagram, Twitter, & Facebook feeds, as well as my Pinterest page on Grief. I use the hashtag #6MonthsOfGrief, so it can easily be found on any platform. Please share this project with anyone you think might need it.

Thank you, and see you tomorrow.