6 Months of Grief Project: Day 58

A found love letter

This is Day 58 of my #6MonthsOfGrief Project. To learn more about this practice, feel free to visit Day One, where I explain this project in more detail.

As I have been going through boxes and sorting, I am constantly finding love letters I wrote to my husband. Every time one appears, it is like a warm stab through my heart - I love re-reading them and remembering the warmth of our blossoming love, but it also hurts like an ice pick through my heart, to realize all of that is over now. As I went through and cleaned up his altars, I found a lot of these letters, because he seems to have kept every single one I wrote to him. When I find them, it's often too painful to read them, so I just stick them on his altars. I still don't know what to do with them, but today's image is one of those notes. This one I pinned it to the wall, along with his other photos.

Today's image feels extra vulnerable. I guess because these are words that were only ever meant for his eyes. It feels strange to share my goofy, first love blatherings with strangers. But that's what I am being called to do today, and part of this project is being vulnerable.

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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:

• Widowed Village
• 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.