You might notice in the menu of this blog an option that says, ‘surviving widowhood.’ If you click on it, you will be taken to the place I went to in my first year to let some of my raw feelings out. My raw pain. My desperate attempt to reach out to the ether and find my husband.
I didn’t write in it all that much but when I did, I let out my pain. It helped a lot. The first year is hard in so many ways but the one that is the worst for somebody who likes to write is that it is hard to concentrate long enough to write substantially. It was for me, at least. Focus is a commodity no matter what but when you are grieving, focus is as valuable as a gold bar. And seen just as much as the average person sees a real gold bar.
Instead of moving all of those posts over here, I like the idea of having my first year be in its own place. It is another reminder of where I was and how far I’ve come.
This life. This world. Is filled with so much pain and there is a lot of pain in that blog. But one of the things I have learned in grief is that there can be beauty in sadness. There can be beauty in pain. As paradoxical as that is, it is true and I like to think that Surviving Widowhood captured some of the beauty of that raw pain. If you can get over the paradox, that doesn’t sound as bad as it might. Beauty does not have a value judgement. Beauty can be in anything and not take away from it’s source of emotion. Saying that pain has beauty does not minimize it, it captures it. It brings out its catharsis. I like that.
