6 Months of Grief Project: Day 19

Exhausted Rage at the Doctor's Office

This is Day 19 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 I went to the doctor. As many sudden widows will tell you, booking appointments, let alone actually GOING to them, can feel like climbing the most impossible mountain. We never know how we are going to feel on any given day and getting up, showering, and getting dressed can feel impossible on the deep grief days. I had been putting off getting my yearly physical and check-up for months. It got so bad that my doctor threatened to stop refilling my prescriptions if I didn't go, so I finally booked the damn appointment and got there on time.

Now, some of you may not know this, but I am a Fat, Strong Lady. Being fat and going to the doctor is it's own kind of hell, because Western medicine is convinced that one can't ever be fat and healthy, despite the myriad amounts of research proving the exact opposite. So whenever I walk into that doctor's office, I have to face a lot of biased, non-science-based weight loss talk. It's a battle on the best of days, let alone when I am in deep grief. 

The first thing the nurse always does is put you on a scale. I had a cheery, bubbly nurse, so it took me by surprise when she covered the number on the scale and asked me to "guess" what my weight was. "What is this, a carnival game?" I ask. She responds in her bubbly manner, "No! I just thought you would be surprised! You've lost 20 lbs. Good for you!" I stare at her, dumbfounded. Perhaps she does not know that I am a sudden widow. Perhaps she does not know that I still have a very hard time feeding myself. Perhaps she does not realize that sudden, extreme weight loss is not something to be celebrated, but questioned, as it is a sign that something significant has changed in the body.

I Should Have Stayed in Bed

So I ask her. "Are you aware that I am suddenly widowed?" She quickly checks her chart. "Oh yes, I see," she says. "Well, at least this is one good outcome!" she cheerily responds. Again, I stand there, dumbfounded. I can't even process what she is saying to me. Is she saying that a good thing coming out of my husband dying suddenly before my eyes is that I stopped feeding myself and lost 20 lbs? IS THAT WHAT SHE IS SAYING TO ME? 

This is how blind and deep our fat shaming and ignorance go in our society and healthcare system - that the fact that my weight loss is celebrated, when the much more real and painful truth of being a sudden widow, is more or less ignored. In fact, I asked her what resources she had around deep grief, and surviving the sudden loss of a partner and she didn't have anything to offer me. They don't even offer grief counseling at my healthcare facility. All she could give me was the number of their psychiatric unit. 

So I gritted my teeth and got through the rest of the check-up. "Wow, your blood tests all look great! That's so surprising!" the doctor says in shock. "But really, you should talk to our Wellness Coach about losing that weight." Oh really? So even though all your medical tests say that I am fine and healthy, you still think I should starve myself to reach an arbitrary number that has been proven to mean nothing?

These are the times that when my husband was alive, I would return home and cry on his shoulder. He would laugh, and tell me it's all BS and tickle me or paint my toenails or make me go outside to pull weeds with him. But instead, I return to a house that is cacophonous in its emptiness and I try to soothe myself. But all I can do is go to bed, without feeding myself and hope that sleep will take me away from my heartbreaking, stupid life for at least a few hours - just a little bit of respite from the pain.

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

• 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:

• Camp Widow

• Soaring Spirits International

Living with Grief Resources:

• 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, & Facebookfeeds, 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.

Jo Carson's Spider Speculations

I just had the wonderful opportunity to read Jo Carson's book Spider Speculations: A Physics & Biophysics of Storytelling to review for the Arts & Healing Network.


This is a book about many things including synchronicity and interestingly, before I received this book (or knew anything about it) I had a dream in which someone (some part of myself) had just published a book called Loving You: The Physics of Loving Yourself & Others. This dream has lead me on a whole new journey of learning how to truly love myself, and Jo Carson's book weaves beautifully into that path. What we feel has a big impact on our energy and this can heal even the deepest and most brutal of hurts.

When I worked with all the "bad" things in my life and asked, What is the root of this problem? I always came back to a lack of love and respect for myself. So my prayer became simple - How do I love myself?, which has already transformed my life in astonishing ways. It is impossible to describe in words, but in a nutshell, I have a new attitude about myself and my life. When I make choices with love for myself, I make the best, most healing choice, for me and for others.

Contrary to what our American culture teaches, making choices out of authentic love and respect for ourselves in not selfish, because there is no way to authentically love ourselves without loving others as well. It's impossible not to, because when it comes to love there are no boundaries. I am you and you are me.

Love also inspires imagination and creativity and those are two of the greatest healing forces in the world.

I also include humor in that list. From the book: Comedy is about survival. Find some way to laugh, or die.

Humor has always been essential in my life and has gotten me through some of the darkest periods of my life. It's all about re-framing - which is also what this book is about.

It's written by a storyteller so at times it is a bit choppy and hard to read - stream of consciousness-style. But the subject matter is thrilling and once I read a few chapters, I really sunk into it and could get lost in the story.

Pay attention to the synchronicities in your life and follow up on them - you will be amazed what will shift in your life.

Moon Time

Nancy Passmore's Lunar Calendar

I've been thinking a lot about the Moon lately.  Perhaps because of the upcoming Total Lunar Eclipse happening tomorrow (during the full moon no less!). Perhaps because my husband and I are very focused on getting pregnant and I am tracking my moon (menstruation) cycle very carefully.

I've always been fascinated by how we as women sync up with the cycles of the moon.  I just ordered Nancy Passmore's Lunar Calendar. I love how this calendar honors the spiral movement of the days (not the square graph of regular calendars). I plan to record my moon time on the calendar and see if there are any patterns with the moon and its cycles.

And all this talk of menstruation(!) reminds me of my friend and fellow John F. Kennedy University Arts & Consciousness graduate Leah Libow's wonderful blog: hyster-y. She has some really fascinating entries of late, discussing her most recent solo exhibition which explored "the Feminine psyche rediscovering itself through reconnection to the womb."

"Lilith 1: Blood Ritual" by Leah Libow (2007)

In reading her blog entries, I especially enjoyed her description of trying to define art to a patron. It's so wonderful, I am going to reprint here (but read the whole thing here):

On the last day of my exhibition I was standing around the corner from the entrance of the gallery where my full frontal with menstrual blood was hanging. I overheard a woman (who was standing in front of this photo) say "You call that art?!" in a very sarcastic tone. As she rounded the corner, I faced her and said "Yes, I'm the artist." She asked which artist, and I told her "the one exhibiting in the hallway." "You mean the one showing photos of women having their period?!" "YES."

I'll refrain from boring you with the rest of the dialogue. Mostly it was me trying to pick up the pieces of my ego and defend my work. I did not do a good job of it because I was coming from a place of fear, anger and defensiveness instead of power and strength.  And I soon realized that I was speaking to an audience (she was its representative) whose opinion of art most likely included the impressionists and perhaps a few abstract painters as well, but did not include the 70's feminist artists or any conceptual or performance art. And then, after I took a few breaths and calmed down, I recalled that I had taken an entire course in graduate school which focused on the question "What is Art?"... and that even a bunch of art school grad students had trouble answering that one.

I appreciate Leah's truthfulness and transparency in her life as an artist.  Such an inspiration! I highly recommend hopping over and checking out her fabulous scene.