6 Months of Grief Project: Day 44

Some of the mystical art at Deetjen's in Big Sur

This is Day 44 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 returned from an amazing trip to Big Sur, California. Thanks to some very special friends, I was lucky enough to stay in a beautiful home, up on the East Ridge. I made sure to visit all my favorite places including Deetjen's Big Sur Inn, which is full of hobbit homes and beautiful, mystical art. This was a very special place for my husband and I, so there were many moments of breaking down as I walked around the property. It was almost like I could feel him there with me, smelling the jasmine and jumping the river to go look at the waterfall.

Big Sur is such a nourishing place, but also brutal in its elements and survival. I also realized that the memories of my lost love here are brutal too. And yet... there was also deep joy in re-connecting with all the places we loved to go together and finding new places he would not have wanted to visit, but that I really enjoy. Being a widow is like living a life of paradoxes. We dwell in conflicting emotions daily and it has become familiar to me. I can be sobbing in deep grief at all the memories flooding into my heart and yet also delighting in a new experience at the same time.

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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:

• Modern Loss's excellent resource list
• 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.