Surviving Year Two: Week 28

Metal Heart

This is Week 28 of my Surviving Year Two Grief Project. Details about all my Grief Projects, as well as Grief Resources can be found here.

I survived my second Valentine's Day without him. I think about where my heart and soul was last year on Valentine's Day, and it's good to see how much I have healed and transformed. I am definitely on more solid ground. But this ground is also hard and devoid of much new growth or life. My heart feels steely and cold. The soft warm flesh of love and connection I once felt has been replaced by old artifacts of a life once-lived, now lost. I have a wound that is now covered with cold, hard memories.

I know what it feels like to have been truly, unconditionally loved and there is no way that I can go back to the older, more dysfunctional ways of being in relationship with someone. This means I will probably be on my own from here on out. I grieve this loss as deeply as I grieve the loss of my husband.

Is it better to have known this love and lost it, then to have never felt it? I think so. I hope so.

Thank you for witnessing me. See you next week.