6 Months of Grief Project: Day 62

Tiny Hopes

This is Day 62 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've found a very lovely spot to eat on my lunch break at my new job. There is water and birds and quiet, which is just what I need to rest my grief-filled heart and mind. This job is a wonderful distraction from the sorrow I feel every day, but I find I tire much more easily then I would normally. My hour in nature fuels my soul and nourishes my body so I can return to work refreshed and ready.

Today, as I was staring at the water, I felt a glimmer of hope. I felt myself starting to realize that while my life has been full of so many sudden shifts and changes, some of them might actually be okay. I felt for a small but powerful moment, that I may actually survive this grief. I felt the lightest wisp of joy at the thought of future. I have not felt positively about the future since my husband died, 8 months ago, so to have any kind of hopeful feeling is quite significant and powerful. At that very moment, the tiniest, lightest, little feather drifted by and landed on my cheek. It felt like the tiniest of angel kisses, and I realized that this feather is a powerful symbol of my small, fragile hope that my life might turn out to be okay. Possibly, the sudden death of my husband is not the end of my joys and hope. Maybe I can still have a future life worth living. It's a tiny and fragile hope, but it's here in the palm of my hand, where I can keep it safe.

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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.