6 Months of Grief Project: Day 114

Mermaid Lifestyles

This is Day 114 of my #6MonthsOfGrief Project. To learn more about this practice, feel free to visit Day One, where I explain this project in more detail.

My husband was an adventurer. His business took him to all sorts of odd places. We both have a deep love of hot water and living like mermaids, so he was always on the lookout for new places to visit and experience. This amazing place is in Redding, California — normally a town we used to just get through to get somewhere else. Who knew this amazing paradise existed inside such a rough city?

This photo was taken 2 years ago today. At this point in our lives, my husband was starting to really become an obsessive workaholic. Unbeknownst to me, my husband's secret debt was starting to mount at this point, which was why his workaholism escalated as well.

I went along on this business trip because he said he had found this beautiful, remote place where I could hang out while he went off and did his deals. I made him promise to have one full day of no work, where he would just sit by the pool and relax. He was so resistant but finally settled in and that's when this photo was taken.

I remember having several moments that day where I looked around and knew that we would never be together at this beautiful place again. I shook those thoughts off, thinking, "That's crazy. Of course we're going to come back here. It's beautiful." But the truth would come trickling back in. A truth I couldn't possibly comprehend in the moment, and can barely comprehend now.

So, to work through those scary intuitive feelings, I took a lot of photos to honor the moment, the day, the trip, our love. I'm glad I found a way to work through those scary feelings that day. I'm glad I am finding a way to get through this heartbreaking grief today.

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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:

• Filmmaker Gemma Green Hope made a short animation in memory of her grandmother 
• Photographer Sarah Treanor Takes Moving Self-Portraits to Cope with Her Fiance's Death
• 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:

• Open to Hope: Finding Hope After Loss
• Widowed Village
• Camp Widow

• Soaring Spirits International

Living with Grief Resources:

• The Grief Geek
• Modern Loss's excellent resource list
• The writings of Tim Lawrence
• The Rules of Grief are for Other People by Shawn Doyle on The Good Men Project
• 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 Losses, 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.