6 Months of Grief Project: Day 33

Grief Spirals

This is Day 33 of my #6MonthsOfGrief Project. To learn more about this practice, feel free to visit Day One, where I explain this project in more detail.

The first week my husband passed away, my house was filled with people. It feels very strange to say this, but I miss that first week in a lot of ways. Even though my heart was broken and I was in shock and total confusion as to why my husband was suddenly dead, I had people surrounding me with love, cooking me food, washing the dishes, doing the laundry. Now my house is almost always empty, and I have to face these household tasks alone. They often don't get done, because I am too tired and too sad to face them.

That first week, my friends Bill and Lorna visited regularly with their two wild, smart, creative daughters. I will always remember how completely brave and unflinching these two little girls were in the face of my grief. I regularly sobbed and cried in front of them, and they simply witnessed me, quietly and deeply. Once I would finish sobbing, they would offer up something to do, like "do you want to draw with me now?" I have never seen a more perfect way to be with someone in grief. Kids can be such amazing teachers sometimes.

As we drew, I often could only move the pen on the page without much detail or finesse. Often the marks I would make would take the form of spirals. Today's photo is one of my favorite spiral pages. Drawing this powerful, archetypal image calmed me down, made me feel centered and helped me step out of my anxiety and fear.

We are right at the time of the New Moon and that is always a reminder to me that everything ends and everything begins again, just like the spiral.

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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
• When the Fall Comes, a film about Grief by Adriana Marchione
• 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.