6 Months of Grief Project: Day 116

How Ya Like My Cut?

This is Day 116 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 has been a very long day. It started with physical therapy for my torn rotator cuff, then a full day of work, then rush to do my live radio show. I'm so tired. But it's worth it. When I think about not doing my show, or stopping this Grief Project before it is complete, it makes me feel so sad. So I make it work. Tomorrow I'm up at 5:30am to do my workout/rehab before work, even though I'm always so wired from doing my live radio show that it's hard to get to sleep as early as I should to get a full night's rest. After work tomorrow, I rush off to therapy and at some point I need to wash all those dirty dishes and grocery shop. There's never enough time when you are a widow, and yet it seems like there is nothing but time filled with grief.

I move in a haze, hoping I never get dangerously tired. I try not to screw things up too badly. I miss my life partner. I miss someone cooking me dinner before I get home. I miss having someone clean up the dead gopher bodies my cats dragged in. I miss my best friend. I miss my husband.

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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.