6 Months of Grief Project: Day 34

New Worlds (photo by Kim Corbin)

This is Day 34 of my #6MonthsOfGrief Project. To learn more about this practice, feel free to visit Day One, where I explain this project in more detail.

Shortly after my husband Justin passed away, the organization I worked for closed its doors and I found myself unemployed. Having to deal with finding a new job on top of the grief, the seemingly endless widow paperwork, and closing down my husband's business felt like too much to bear. I got a wonderfully generous severance check from my beloved former employer and I have been living on that money for the last 5 months, but it had become time to face the music and start that often painful process (on the best of days) of job hunting.

So I put the word out on my social media feeds and shared my resume with my friends. The very same day I put the word out that I was looking for new employment, my friend Kim learned that there was a position opening up at the wonderful organization where she has worked for the last 11 years, and she arranged an interview for me. As I was driving to this first interview, I realized the neighborhood was very familiar to me, and as I turned the corner I saw the big, industrial warehouse where my husband used to build helicopters, back when we were first married. In addition to this magical moment of recognition, I wouldn't even know Kim without my husband, who introduced us a few years ago. She and I have felt his presence so strongly as we have gone through the process of deciding if I was a good fit for this job.

Today I was offered the job at New World Library and I accepted, and right after we took today's photo in front of my new place of work, I thanked Kim for everything she did to make this moment happen. We then looked into each other's eyes and said simultaneously, "and thank you, Justin!"

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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.