Journeys through Widowhood
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Healing
My Affirmations for Healing
I have strength.
I have good people to lean on.
I have a lifetime of experience to guide me.
I have a future of my own making.
What Does Healing Even Feel Like?
Even before -- and certainly after -- Richard's death, the possibility of healing was unimaginable. How could I ever be even remotely OK? How could I ever stop grieving and mourning?
Gradually, I realized that the memories were less intensely painful. Even more gradually, the memories started to bring comfort. The time between piercing memories started to lengthen. The comforting memories started to happen more often and to last longer.
Eventually, it dawned on me. Healing is remembering without pain.
Healing I
Cautiously, I notice glimpses of healing. Just hints of what a different life can be like.
Healing isn't the moving on that some well-meaning people urge the bereaved to do. Moving on sounds cold, transactional. It belittles the reality of loss, the feelings of grief, and the practice of mourning. So I refuse to say "I'm moving on."
Healing, on the other hand, has an almost spiritual quality to it. Healing suggests a small, positive change after enduring loss. A tiny bit of hope as someone travels a rocky and steep path toward an unknown destination. Healing is a reward for progressing along that difficult path. What makes me think that even the smallest bit of healing has started? I can be in the car without mourning. I can sing along with the car radio again. I can listen to music at night without weeping. I can see his picture and smile. I enjoy eating again, not just a hurried feeding to fuel my body. I feel a little lighter. I stand a little straighter. Daily living is easier. Small obstacles feel smaller. Bigger obstacles don't feel as impossible to overcome. Setbacks will happen, and I'll always have more grieving to do. But, just maybe, healing has started. Healing II, The First Dream I had my first dream about Richard early one morning, seven months after his death. I woke very early and tried to go back to sleep.
I didn't quite sleep, but dozed in a sort of twilight state: not fully awake nor fully asleep. It seemed as if I were holding him, but the space where he would have been was empty. I was lovingly holding his empty space.
And while I held that empty space, I remembered his gentle death. There was no pain in that memory, simply feeling peaceful on his behalf.
This dream felt oddly comforting. I believe it to have been a sign of healing.
Healing III Surgery is a possible metaphor for loss, and surgical recovery a metaphor for healing. You might know that surgery is coming. There's anxiety about whether the surgery will be easy or hard. But the surgery is certain, inescapable, feared. Or surgery might be unplanned, unprepared for: you just wake up, and your own body has changed. Either way, you abdicate control. The process, the timing, the outcome are all out of your hands.
After the surgery (the loss in this metaphor) there will be pain: sometimes a deep ache and sometimes intense pain. Sometimes you're angry, frustrated, moaning, desperate.
But the wound does close, the bones do knit, and the muscles and nerves do regenerate themselves. Your function might never be the same. And there will be a scar.
My scar is beginning to form, covering the place where the raw wound used to be. I'll wear that scar as a badge of honor. Healing IV Nothing about widowing is linear or the least bit predictable. Simply because I was healing for a given minute, hour, or day doesn't mean that the next minute/hour/day will bring more healing-- or even the same kind of healing. In fact, the opposite is true: if I feel healing one minute, I can almost count on fierce pain the next moment. But the trend line is less grief and more healing ... until it's not.
Healing isn't the moving on that some well-meaning people urge the bereaved to do. Moving on sounds cold, transactional. It belittles the reality of loss, the feelings of grief, and the practice of mourning. So I refuse to say "I'm moving on."
Healing, on the other hand, has an almost spiritual quality to it. Healing suggests a small, positive change after enduring loss. A tiny bit of hope as someone travels a rocky and steep path toward an unknown destination. Healing is a reward for progressing along that difficult path. What makes me think that even the smallest bit of healing has started? I can be in the car without mourning. I can sing along with the car radio again. I can listen to music at night without weeping. I can see his picture and smile. I enjoy eating again, not just a hurried feeding to fuel my body. I feel a little lighter. I stand a little straighter. Daily living is easier. Small obstacles feel smaller. Bigger obstacles don't feel as impossible to overcome. Setbacks will happen, and I'll always have more grieving to do. But, just maybe, healing has started. Healing II, The First Dream I had my first dream about Richard early one morning, seven months after his death. I woke very early and tried to go back to sleep.
I didn't quite sleep, but dozed in a sort of twilight state: not fully awake nor fully asleep. It seemed as if I were holding him, but the space where he would have been was empty. I was lovingly holding his empty space.
And while I held that empty space, I remembered his gentle death. There was no pain in that memory, simply feeling peaceful on his behalf.
This dream felt oddly comforting. I believe it to have been a sign of healing.
Healing III Surgery is a possible metaphor for loss, and surgical recovery a metaphor for healing. You might know that surgery is coming. There's anxiety about whether the surgery will be easy or hard. But the surgery is certain, inescapable, feared. Or surgery might be unplanned, unprepared for: you just wake up, and your own body has changed. Either way, you abdicate control. The process, the timing, the outcome are all out of your hands.
After the surgery (the loss in this metaphor) there will be pain: sometimes a deep ache and sometimes intense pain. Sometimes you're angry, frustrated, moaning, desperate.
But the wound does close, the bones do knit, and the muscles and nerves do regenerate themselves. Your function might never be the same. And there will be a scar.
My scar is beginning to form, covering the place where the raw wound used to be. I'll wear that scar as a badge of honor. Healing IV Nothing about widowing is linear or the least bit predictable. Simply because I was healing for a given minute, hour, or day doesn't mean that the next minute/hour/day will bring more healing-- or even the same kind of healing. In fact, the opposite is true: if I feel healing one minute, I can almost count on fierce pain the next moment. But the trend line is less grief and more healing ... until it's not.
