6 Months of Grief Project: Day 88

Vast Spaces

This is Day 88 of my #6MonthsOfGrief Project. To learn more about this practice, feel free to visit Day One, where I explain this project in more detail.

How do I contain the vastness of my soul? Should it be contained? There is so much inside me and yet I rarely have a connection to it, these days. Today I was reminded of a creative project I played a small role in, before my husband passed away. 

My improvisational moment is now part of an audio tour at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. I'm told it's one of the favorites of the staff there.

Seeing this piece resurface reminds me of who I used to be, before this grief. I was someone who could jump in and do fun collaborative projects. I valued my thoughts and ideas enough to let someone record them. I knew my ideas were valuable.

I have lost connection to that. Why? Why does grief make me hate myself so much? Why does it make me think I am stupid and my ideas are worthless? 

Or maybe I have always felt that way, and through the rosy lens of time passing, I can pretend that I wasn't, before my husband's death.

Maybe this Grief Project is helping me find the value of my thoughts and feelings again. Maybe this project is even helping me see the value of my grief.

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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
• 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 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.