6 Months of Grief Project: Day 179

From Hoisting to Cubicle Drag

This is Day 179 of my #6MonthsOfGrief Project. To learn more about this practice, feel free to visit Day One, where I explain this project in more detail.

Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I haul my grief-filled, over-tired, anxious body out of bed and go lift weights before starting my work day. Because I work out at a super old school weightlifting gym, there are no showers, or changing rooms or lockers — just a bathroom. So I do my best to clean up, change into my cubicle drag and hit the road. I love lifting weights, despite a painful shoulder injury I've had since March. I can't imagine not doing it. But trying to keep up with this schedule is making me feel like a zombie. I also know that just being in grief, without any other life commitments also makes me feel like a zombie, so I might as well lift and at least make my body feel better.

But is this schedule killing me? Sometimes I feel like it might be. Not getting enough sleep is the absolute worst feeling in the word. It effects every part of my being. But I don't know what or how I can change. It is tough to navigate these life choices. My husband was always so good at giving me counsel in these situations. He knew me so well, and was extremely good at thinking outside the box, coming up with creative solutions I would have never thought of. I'm not so good at doing that on my own.

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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:

• Second Firsts with Christina Rasmussen
• Death and Broken Cups by Ivan Cenzi
• What Joe Biden Has Said About Dealing With Personal Tragedy And Grief
• Death, Grief & Shattered Assumptions
• Stifled Grief: How the West Has It Wrong
• How Grief Can Make You Sick
• What's Your Grief?
• 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.