Growing out of our old selves

I didn't write this story, and thank who ever did. The sculpture above was created by Elizabeth Ostrander  www.elizabethostrander.com

This story applies to everybody. 

"Along a dusty road in India there sat a beggar who sold cocoons.  A young boy watched him day after day, and the beggar finally beckoned to him.

"Do you know what beauty lies within this ugly chrysalis?  I will give you one so that you might see for yourself.  But you must be careful not to handle the cocoon until the butterfly comes out."

The boy was enchanted with his gift and hurried home to await the butterfly.  He laid the cocoon on the floor and became aware of a curious thing.  The butterfly was beating its fragile wings against the hard wall of the chrysalis until it appeared it would surely perish before it could break the unyielding prison.  Wanting only to help, the boy swiftly pried the cocoon open.

Out flopped a wet, brown, ugly thing which quickly died.

When the beggar discovered what happened, he explained to the boy, "In order for the butterfly's wings to grow strong enough to support him, it is necessary that it beat them against the walls of its cocoon.  Only by this struggle can its wings become beautiful and durable.  When you denied it the struggle, you took away its only chance for survival."

Moving forward, with the emergency brake on

"I'm alone. Who can help me out here? "  I once cried out.

Silence.  I will never forget that relentless silence when he died.  I begged for his help beyond his grave.  Silence.  Nothing.  Occasionally I'd be blessed with a glimmer that he was beside me, but damned if this glimmer was going to help me with something I really needed.  Silence.  Nothing.

Nothing to do but pick up those pieces and "Suck it up, Marine".

Let me tell you what life is like for this widow seven long years later: it is a lovingly crafted system with fewer moving parts, each designed to not overwhelm.  Discipline and indulgence teeter on a fulcrum of faith in God and the ultimate goodness of life.  I don't ask for perfect, predictable circumstances.  That would be dull.  Instead I ask for equilibrium.  After my long fall through hell before and after my husband died, I want peacefulness at the conclusion of each day.

I've long assumed that peacefulness for me requires solitude.   I've actually become a bit of a hermit, enjoying my own projects, my own timing, my own weightless independence.   Though I have felt the longing for union, evidently it's more in the abstract.   My first relationship as a widow was fairly insubstantial and never really threatened my equilibrium.

Now a man has come into my life.  A good man.  With him I feel a caring and a peace.  Peace with someone.  This is new.  I didn't even feel this sense of soul peacefulness with my late husband.  This new peacefulness is also extremely unsettling.  Does this make any sense?  What if I fall in love,  need someone, and lose what life I've created on my own, not to mention, lose him if he dies? I will experience another very hard fall into hell.  It cost me years to recover when my late husband died.  Rationally, I say this could be a long free fall into heaven if I let go. But this isn't how I feel. 

So my hand is on the emergency brake, and my life grinds forward.  This is the best I can do for now.  I accept that God is in charge, and I will try to take my hand off that emergency brake and place it on His.  God has always found a way to flow around, through, above and below a journey to hell or to heaven. 

Does anybody have any advice on this?  I could use some help.

Sincerely yours

One quality has marked my life: Sincerely Seeking.

I was born lost and clueless. I don't know about you, but I didn't particularly enjoy these feelings. Marriage and its commitment, settled my fears; it  felt orderly and natural. How can I express the enormous 'settledness' of union with a beloved?    Strong wills aside, my husband and I figured things out.  Love knit us together. 

Then he died, setting me adrift in a sea of widows and widowers, lost and clueless like myself.   I found great comfort and hope knowing how common widowhood was.   Some how this made it less scary.   Though there is no 'one size fits all' course for widows, seeing some navigate with courage and fortitude through that sea gave me hope.   We all know there is no going back; death wipes out the familiar landscape.   One must carry on.  The tools I first used, impatience and pluck, helped, but  weren't enough to bring me out of the sea of grief.  Many widows and widowers were making it to another side, establishing a happy, new life.   They were getting there.  Could I?  How could I?

I've come to believe the key to getting to shore is sincerely seeking a new life.  Sincerely letting go of the old.  Sincerity opens the way to

• what is real, what is true
• our wounds, so they can heal
• our unmet needs, so we can find ways to meeting them
• having our life mean something to somebody else 
• kindness from others
• kindness in ourselves to deal with callousness in others
• lessons, and more lessons
• our sheer grit - You Go Girl!
• courage to experiment, fail, and succeed 
• appreciation for our own very special qualities 
• facing our future even though death is in it
• facing our future, with love in it

Widowhood gave me two choices if I wanted to move on.  One: Desperation, okay in the beginning, but really tiring, like going around in circles.  Two: Sincerity, which can lead to something real: firm new ground.

It took me a while, a great while, but I resorted to the second one.  I'm going to stick with it.  I have crossed over, to a new life.   It's pretty darn good.    Seven and a half years out, my heart is bigger. My interests have grown and changed, and are satisfying.   My days are happier, on balance.  I enter this holiday season without dread.   I don't look back to the old life, wishing I could go back.   I've opened my heart to a new person.  Two new people, actually.  Me, and a new 'he'.

I hope this helps, if you're lost.

Widowhood. It ain't funny

Well, maybe it is, a little.  I'm amazed how many of us are collectors.  Compulsive buyers.  Compulsive collectors.

Meet my rocks.  The marble from Massachusetts.  The others from deep in my backyard.  I love rocks.   I adore rocks.  Rocks last forever. Rocks are my friends. 

Meet my other best friends. My journal, my favorite blogs, my books, my gardens, my cats, my piano, my bicycles, my road trips, my food, my clothes, my shoes, my jewelry.   

Well, if collecting doesn't solve the grief problem, what is it that makes us resilient enough to beat it?

Maybe the humor.  Maybe getting to the real issues and having a good cry.  Maybe having somebody believe in you.  Maybe the passage of time.  Maybe taking on new projects.   Maybe optimism and faith.  Maybe enough money.   Maybe good enough health.  Maybe a 'can-do' spirit.   Maybe the void itself once we welcome it.  Maybe having a dear new friend. 

Whatever those special ingredients, it somehow all adds up to a new identity, post widowhood, at some point in our lives.  It has to. 

Time's come to give up a few things I've hoarded.  I'm going to take a deep breath, and purge some things from my closet.  Maybe I can live with less?

Tell me about your collections.  Are they helping?

How can somebody have this much stuff?

Enough is enough!  Which sweaters should I hold on to?  I'm not talking about my own.  I mean his.  I gave away most of his sweaters, shoes, coats, jackets, vests, PJs, slippers, belts, hats, gloves, boots and old electronics by the third year.  Now I'm holding on to just a few special items...

Every time I try to let one more garment go, paralysis sets in.   Can't I hold on to the option of seeing his clothes if I'm lonely?   They're not in a closet I use anyway.

I have to confess I'm eyeing that space for my own use. 

Someone said you have to create empty spaces in your closets, for someone else to enter.  Nice thought, probably true.  However, to me empty space is like an ugly bleeding gash that taunts me.  I'm alone.  Alone.

I'll deal with this later.  Close the door.  If and when the times comes I will make the space for somebody else; evidently not a moment sooner.

What do you think?  Keep those last few things of his or clear them out? 

Generally I have a title for a post before I write.  Today I don't.  One will emerge. 

..................................

A man I used to be friends with has re entered my life via Facebook.  Facebook has connected me with several old friends, but this man immediately reached beyond its pages.  We've exchanged a couple e-mails and his intentions appear sincere and trustworthy.  He wants to get to know the woman behind the photos on Facebook. 

I welcome the connection.  Since he lives hundreds of miles away, it appears we'll be pen pals.  But in some ways we're two peas in a pod.  Both introverts, both presently unmarried, both thoughtful, and both writers.  Well, he's an author of seven nonfiction books, so his league is, well, different.

My hope is that I can find a true friend, one I can relate to and care about.

That's all I wanted to say.  I welcome a new chapter in my life, and love that I can contribute to it by writing.

I think God has good intentions for me.  "Where love is, there is God also."

..........................................

I just looked up this quote. It is the title of a story by Leo Tolstoy.  I just read the story.  Now I know why this post doesn't have a title.  The 'love' has to be filled in by me.

Where _____ is, there is God also.

 



Why let go?

 

 

 

 

   My list of  reasons to let go.

• Our late husbands' love is encoded in our DNA and can never to be lost
• Fulfillment is ours to access inside, not for someone to give us or take away
• God's larger love story for us is being written
• We can mature in ways we didn't have to when our late husbands offered us shelter
• We inhabit our own psyches fully, now that he's not around to inhabit them
• Living without his second opinion is fine because our own and God's is ample
• The fear "But I'm alone" can't stop us from traveling, or stepping out to have a good time
• We have more sex with the person who gets all our hot spots, every time - us!
• We blow our own minds when we realize how powerful we've become on our own
• We blow other wives' minds when they learn all we've been doing

The past isn't firm ground.  It has vanished.  I feel shaky.  The present is shifting under my feet constantly, yet I trust there's solid rock underneath.  This rock is God and the 'me' beneath all my shifting identities.  'Wife' is gone.  My husband's eyes don't mirror mine anymore.  'Widow' is a but a passage, and cold comfort.  

God remains.  The sky remains.  The water, the earth and all their inhabitants remain.  And their eyes mirror my intention and deepest self.  What message am I sending out?  Love?  Gratitude? Anticipation?  I need to be held accountable.

What benefits have you found in letting go of your late husband and the life you once had?

In the emptiness I meet my architect

Things I'm learning on this, my private retreat in Down East Maine.

Though fear stands at the portal of ME,

and would easily be my architect,

I am not my FEAR. 

My FEAR is not me.

I am instead NEEDINESS.  Incompletion.

Blindness. Unknowingness.

I give these attributes my consent.

My architect, is LOVE.

Blockage by fear

is a path well known and well worn.

Its crime? Blocking vibrant life, earthy love,

 and ME, most of all.

I've learned the password to move past my fear.

It's simple and profound.

 "You are welcome, ____ _______(my name)"

said with whole heart and will.

Inside what have I found? who? ME?

I stand inside, pliable, still blind,  uninitiated.

I infer my footing because

LOVE has me in sight. 

                                                                                                      'poem' by GowitheFlo

I hope I can continue to tell you who and what I find. 

When we open our mouths, what comes out?

I have two older sisters.   One sister is an explainer.   The other is an informer.   When they speak I can pretty much count on learning something.  I've recently spent 10 days, separately, with each of them.   That's the longest period I've spent with them since childhood.  It was the first time I really noticed how they relate to others when they speak.

That's them.  What about you?  I know I'm not an explainer, or an informer, or a complainer, or an entertainer, or a debater, or a teaser.   Least I don't think so.  I have been called a cheerleader, but this man didn't spend 10 days in a row with me.  

Anyway, both of my sisters are amazing examples of women who have reshaped themselves and their circumstances in their sixth decade.  I'd like to follow in their footsteps in my own way.  True, neither of them are widows, but each has gone against the grain, upset the applecart, so to speak.  

I learn so much through others.  I depended on my late husband's feedback.  Now I very much want feedback in this new chapter of my life, but I'm not getting very much.  I have to trust that living life as consciously and deliberately as I can is its own reward.

I'm teachable.  I'm eager.  I'm in my own shoes, and stumbling along.  I'm willing, God, to learn more...

Have you found yourself using a new and different voice, now that your husband isn't listening?

Death. Where is thy sting?

I am fortunate.  My husband died in the season new life takes root.  He loved Easter, rather he loved the promise that while darkness held Jesus in its grip those three days, the light of resurrection stripped death and darkness of its power.  Real life, and real light, took up permanent residence.

By some strange coincidence, his passage into death mirrored his beloved story.  I was there.  I felt his spirit enter mine after he died.  I don't feel very sorry and sad, either for him or for myself, on this seventh anniversary. 


I haven't wanted to celebrate Easter since he passed.  I haven't followed the Christian calendar. A little sting still there?  I have 'followed' God, though, so I'm quite sure God isn't bothered by my little failure of Christian etiquette.  

Post Mortem

I just finished my 'transitional' relationship.  My first involvement of body, heart and soul since my husband's death.  I'm so glad I took the chance with this man, because it was wonderful to have a man's arms around me again.  I came to love him, too, and that's never a loss.

It began on JD's 64th birthday, April 4, 2011, and ended on his 65th birthday, 2012.  On his birthday.  In a garden, after treating him to lunch.

Let's back up to one year ago. My first deep infatuation had just ended without consummation. The floodgates of female passion had opened wide and had no where to go.    Well, one way to get over someone is to meet someone new, right?   Enter JD.   He was friendly, handsome, and harmless. Totally trustworthy. But with four underage kids still at home he was Mr. Mom. With full and fair disclosure, he said the kids came first, he came second, and any woman came third.

I was lonely.  Maybe if I approached him as 'summer fling' material, I could swing this.  Maybe we could be more, my heart and body said during the fall.  We'd come to love each other in a way.  Twice we came back together to try to work something out.  Still, I was stunned when I heard the "I'm just not that into you" speech last Tuesday. Could have fooled me. He had invited me to Easter dinner with his family.

Did I want to go through the door he had just shown me?  Next day, on his birthday, I made sure I understood him correctly.  Yes. This time the good byes were for real.  I cried, and surprisingly, he did, too. 

                                                      JD, I so enjoyed knowing you.

In His hands

Yesterday I took my longing to be part of a couple and put it in God's hands.  I literally visualized this transfer, tucking God's fingers around my desire.  I know He will tenderly keep it.  I no longer have to concern myself with it.

It's been weighing me down.  Yes, I am single, and would love a man to delight in me and have my back.  Yes, I would love to delight in him and have his back.  But God can use me to love whether there's a man in the picture or not.  NO MAN DOES NOT MEAN NO EMBRACE.   Nothing and no one can keep me from embracing LIFE.   That, at least, is under my control.

In the last two and a half years I've tried my best to connect with new love.  Boy, getting back into the singles market has been quite an education!  I have no regrets.

I turned myself from a widow, defined by my past, into a single woman alive to my future.  I became more fit, attractive, and adaptable to new and entirely different men.  No one's going to be like my dear husband, and I'm not going to ask them to.  Since I don't meet men around every corner, and I want a man to judge me by content as well as cover, I went online.  Ah, the importance of the Profile.  Good thing I love to write.  I learned a lot.  Different bait, different catch. But much more importantly, I learned to describe myself in a positive light.   I began to see myself in a positive light.

Now I've become pretty comfortable with the meet and greet part of courtship.  I've become pretty comfortable with the attention that comes after.  Most gratefully, I've learned of my value through a couple of very special mens' eyes.  I've learned to make decisions based on my best interests, which are to remain loving and open.

The lesson I most want to learn in life is how to be more loving.   I can do no better than by putting myself in God's hands.  My profile's still on one site, and I'm not holding my breath.

Tears

I didn't cry at his funeral.  I didn't cry for a very very long time.  The learning curve for my new life required not falling apart. I trusted my grieving process.  God was in charge.  The SSRI's I took clipped the highs and the lows I probably would have felt, but I needed them to stay on an even keel.

I kept the house (our house), and now, after nearly seven years, I can handle its maintenance for the most part.  I'm blessed to have a house, and I don't complain.  I've learned so much!  Now I can diagnose and repair a sump pump if I need to - had to once during a flood in my basement.  I can haul buckets of water from the flooded basement for 32 hours straight - had to during an extended power outage.  I can install electrical switches, wireless networking, and surround sound systems.  I can start and use my new gas lawnmower, leaf blower and snow blower (I still need help starting my generator).  I can redecorate rooms with simple carpentry (moulding, mostly), wallpaper,  and paint.  I can use a power paint spray machine and fix it when it clogs.  I can install and maintain an electric fence around my property (for four footed garden interlopers).   I can haul 50 lb bags of rocks, and cut down small trees.  Right now my roof is leaking. The whole darn roof needs to be replaced. That I can't do.  My carpenter is pulling shingles and plywood off over my head and the Insurance Adjuster is coming tomorrow.

I was managing pretty well five years into widowhood.  I stopped the SSRI medication.  I was OK.  Odd. No tears.

I fell in love.  My heart came back to big beautiful life.  We parted after two months.

It was my time to cry.

I _______ , therefore I am.

For me, this blank is easy to fill in.  I create, therefore I am.  This seems inherently selfish.  The relationship is between me and my creation, me and something, not me and someone.  No matter what the circumstances are, I create.  When comfort is needed, I create.   When I need to be seen,  I create.  When I need to be heard, I create.  When I need to be touched, I create.  I do reach out to people, but it isn't my first impulse.

Is creating things a substitute for connection with people, a means of connecting with people, or a means of connecting with God? 

Definitely not the first.  There's no substitute for connecting with people.  I wish I could build better connections with new people.  Not easy for me.  I'm still carving out a new life.  A new me.

Definitely the second. I'd like my creativity to be a means of connecting with people.  When I write, I connect, much more easily than I do speaking.  Not surprising for an introvert.  My primary language, however, is visual and my greatest joy is connecting deeply with people through visual creations.  

Definnitely the third, connecting with God.  I cannot lie when I create.  I cannot be unkind when I create.  It is me at my best. I create, therefore I am.  I have to trust that good will come of this.

Uncovering the 'me' without a 'he' or 'them'

I haven't had a 'he' living under my roof for six and a half years.  No 'thems' for over twenty years.  I don't miss the 'thems' but I do miss the 'he'.  I marvel at women my age or older who love living by themselves.  They say their life is so full.  Their time is their own.  It is meaningful and purposeful and enjoyable. 

I can't imagine this attitude.  Perhaps my time with my husband was too short, only twenty three years.   Perhaps it's my sex drive.  Perhaps it's my age.  Perhaps I simply want the male version of the species to balance my female version.  Perhaps I simply need help.

After his death, huge slices of me fell off, the 'me with him' parts.  Some were quite a relief.   Some left a gap in my fun meter.  Some were crippling; they revealed my undeveloped capabilities.  Widowhood is just one bloody challenge after another when you've lost the other half.  I made the mistake of thinking the couple we were was 'me'.   That I could do what 'we' could do.  Travel as boldly.  Plan household projects as broadly.  Dine out as frequently.  Entertain as easily.  Get as much done in a day's time.

Man, it was a big learning curve to just to keep my head above water.  Inevitably I got stronger and scaled back.  So who is the 'me' without 'he'?    Not simply the scaled back version.  I am a version that didn't even exist when he was here.  I just wish I could celebrate this fact.  Maybe scaled back enthusiasm is appropriate? 

   


  

Enthusiasm

Yeah.  I remember enthusiasm.  Definition: 1. intense and eager enjoyment, interest or approval.  2. a thing that arouses such feelings.

Friends and family enthuse over their interests, and their enthusiasm is contagious, or at least a joy to watch.  If they go on too long, though, I feel sad, out of the loop.  My own enthusiasm is weak.  It has not roared back to life.  In fact, I had more when my husband first died, because I was still going strong with his love.  My priorities were obvious to me.  In the fifth and sixth years, it dribbled away quietly, when I least expected it to.

I embraced my future. I have opened so many new windows in my life to offer lifelong pleasure.  I took up bicycing, running, swimming.  I build new projects.  I continue to garden, travel, camp, eat out, play piano, attend concerts, visit family and friends.  I created a new home that I and my guests truly love.  I've dated and fallen in love (didn't last) and taken a lover (grew tired of just that).  I participate in community both off and online.  However, my enthusiasm has not roared back to life.  I have faith that I'm on track, but a deep loneliness permeates my life.  I need the twinkle in my eye.  Can something  I haven't tried be the answer?  I can't fit another activity into my day.  I would love to fit another mate into my day, but the fact is, not every wonderful and deserving person finds an appreciative mate.  One thing I haven't tried is an expectations adjustment.  My life doesn't have nearly the color and enthusiasm it once did, and perhaps I'm tormenting myself by asking it to. 

Close your eyes.  Clear your heart.  Let it go.




 

Once a Day

I've never been a fan of routine and regimentation.  Unless it's coffee first thing in the morning.   But all of us have a list of  'got to do's'  just to break even in life.  Some people thrive on that list.  I suspect these are the left brain people, a nice orderly people that feel a sense of accomplishment putting a slash of ink through undone business.   I inhabit the other side of my brain mostly, and circle round a task, picking off lesser 'to do's' until I hone in on what really needs to be done.  But I take satisfaction in crossing the 'got to do's' off my list, too.

We know the chaos of widowhood, when the foreign tasks of closing a life rudely push aside routine and the solace it can bring.  Executor duties are complicated, tedious, and frustrating, but they do end, because Uncle Sam insists on it.  Closing a life's history and meaning take far longer.  These overwhelming tasks replace the routines that once grounded our lives.  It's like cleaning up after the tornado that decimated your house and whole town.  At least that was the way it was for me.  I needed to clean up, move on, and make a new life.  If I was fortunate, I'd find new satisfactions that would be as deep as the satisfactions I knew as a lover and wife.  Life would be lighthearted once again.  My humor would return. 

It became really clear to me early on that I would have to develop new systems, from meal planning (alone) to paying taxes (alone), to updating my home to accommodate my capabilities (alone), to maintaining vehicles (alone), to gaining proficiency with technology (alone), to building a social life for one (alone),  to ensuring my emotional health (alone), to reviving my physical health (alone), to enlivening my mental health (alone).  Did I mention alone?  No matter how many loving friends, family, and professional support I had to buttress these efforts, they began with me.  Damned if I felt capable.

Here was a fantastic opportunity to build my life from the ground up.  To establish new healthy routines.  Only thing - where was the enthusiasm?  I was in survival mode. 

Six years out, I'm past survival mode.  I've acquired so many new skills I can't count them all.  Yes, enthusiasm waxes and wanes.  But it is here.  There's still precious little I like to do once a day every day, but that's just fine.  It's just my right brain self doing her thing.

Til death do us part

"He would want you to move on."   I dislike those words.  It's like saying "He would like you to forget him."   Yeah.  Like that's going to happen. "Til death do us part".   As if death can sever the connection. 

He's part of my support system.  I can't undo the love he felt for me.  The love I'm sure he still feels for me beyond the grave. Wouldn't want to.  My self esteem rose steadily throughout our marriage, in part to his belief that I could handle things when he wasn't physically or emotionally around to help.  So when he died and I actually had to handle everything, I believed I could figure things out.  Didn't mean I wasn't furious at him for not doing his part in real life anymore.  Here I was doing two people's work just to stay afloat.  But suck it up, marine. This isn't any different from what any single person living alone experiences.  We juggled a lot of balls as a couple.  I can't juggle all those balls by myself.  I have to decide which three balls are most important to live a life I'll be happy with.  I've dropped so many and still feel like I have too many.  Clarity is what I seek.

Another part of moving on, getting rid of his things, was scary.  I thought that if I removed his stuff, I removed his love.  Didn't happen.  Purging has become my new mantra.  All the rooms in the house we shared are now mine and mine alone.  Even his former library has new sheet rock and bare shelves.  It's going to be my woman cave.

The love never leaves and never dies.


   

Losses

I prepare best I can for loss.   Insurance, cell phone, ID, phone numbers, copies off site, extra supplies, back up generator, 2nd car, friends, keeping needs small and manageable.   But nothing I did prepared me for the ultimate loss.   Terminal cancer.   Hearing the news is like being pushed off a cliff in slow motion.   When my husband and I hit bottom, LIFE would be smashed to pieces.   You can pull out all the stops, fight the good fight, but you're already over the cliff.  I was lucky.   On the way down I had time to treasure him and say good bye.   Then we hit bottom.   His heart stopped beating.  Mine broke.  Life shattered. 

There are plenty of blogs that speak eloquently to the newly widowed.  We need each other.  Like combat soldiers returning from the frontline, we have experienced a life shattering experience that few who haven't been through it can understand.  What I'd like to share in this blog is the creation of my new identity that leaves the past behind.  That accepts the transformative experience of widowhood as a passage and a gift.  I'm accepting that my life is about me, not me and another.  Not me and my dead another.  Not me and the stepkids.  Not me and my future another.  I'm bringing me centerstage. I just hope to stay out the the trap that it's all about me.  My late husband died six and a half years ago.  Widowhood doesn't cut it as an explanation, let alone an excuse for my life.  I'm post widowhood.

Rebuilding my life began as soon as the house emptied out and the donated food was consumed.   I felt like hell, but I was alive. I knew not to do anything really stupid.  The first difficult decision I made by myself was replacing the ratty old electric blanket on our bed.  Excuse me, my bed.  After that tiny decision came the more complicated ones.   Any person used to living on their own has long mastered decision making, but competence comes slowly to me.  I want nothing less than mastering the art of living.  These are the best days of my life.