6 Months of Grief Project: Day 49

Old Grief

This is Day 49 of my #6MonthsOfGrief Project. To learn more about this practice, feel free to visit Day One, where I explain this project in more detail.

Today there is an old darkness enveloping me. Growing up an only child, I spent a lot of time alone. I got used to people disappearing and abandoning me. I thought I would never find someone who really loved and cared for me and would be my partner through life.

Then I met my husband and I finally felt like I wasn't alone. I shared my life with him. And even though we had some major bumps in the road, I felt like he would never abandon me. We were committed to our marriage and our life together.

Then he died, and all my old abandonment issues rose up again, knocking me over and taking my breath away. Of course I don't get to have a life partner. Of course I am meant to be alone. Today I feel the abandonment so deeply. I feel the dark, old grief creeping up and slipping its slippery fingers down my throat and choking me. Today I feel the emptiness of a broken heart. I will live through this, but today things are dark.

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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.