Lindsay's Ramblings

'A Widow's Song'  By:  Carolyn Moor  MWC Founder - Despite what you might think, we are not stuck living in the past because we hang out with other widows. - We are not in denial that we lost our spouses and yet, have a life to live for today. - We know we aren't the same person as before anymore. - We probably do need counseling- among a lot of other things. - We occasionally make bad judgements. That's how we learn. - We know we don't fit 'normal' for you (or us) in the world. - We know you want us to go back to the person we used to be. We wish that too but it's not happening. - Maybe we are crazy, if crazy means nothing makes sense anymore. Feeling crazy sends me on an emotional roller coaster which includes both laughing and crying in one sentence. - We are going to talk about them, have their picture around. Forever. 2 years is not a long time in our world. - We feel like you over step your boundaries with us. - We can't fix this right...

I'm close to the 11 month mark, and I would say that in some ways things are better...but every day is still an emotional roller coaster. It feels like I'm living in two different worlds sometimes...the one where I'm pretending everything is fine in my day to day interactions, and then the world inside my brain where there's a war going on.  A war between  wanting to move forward, wanting to be happy again, wanting to just be done with the grief...and not wanting to let go, missing my husband so much, and  being terrified of forgetting what we had.  I'm getting by okay, but everyday really is an emotional battle that no one sees. The other day I had a pretty bad meltdown after coming home from my visit to see the family in New York. As I laid there on the floor on a pile of Matt's t-shirts crying, I just had this urge to just rip all the pictures of us down from the walls. Because at that moment they just felt like a reminder of all I don't have anymore. ...

Most people don't talk about grief, and that's why it's so misunderstood...but I'm talking about it. We don't talk about it because we know that if we are truly honest about how we really feel, people will think something is wrong with us or tell us we need therapy or give us advice about how we should be handling things...because that's just what people do. So we keep it inside and push it away and pretend that we're just fine and dandy. But I'm not afraid to share the reality of what it's like to be a widow. It is frustrating, because as soon as you share your heart and talk about how hard it really is, people's natural reaction is to try to fix you. You get the advice about what to do with your grief and the "Matt wouldn't want you to be sad" comments and the "he's still with you" comments and the comments about finding peace and joy in God. People truly just do not get that we don't want any of that. All we n...