Yes, this blog is still about grief

I was recently writing a blog post and suddenly thought: “Man, it’s been a while since I’ve written a post about grief."

But has it?

I first started writing this blog a little more than three years ago. My grief was still raw and fresh. At times overwhelming. But with a year of experience — a year of firsts and of dancing two steps forward and one step back — it was also accepting. Accepting that My Favourite Husband (MFH) was dead. Accepting I’m on my own.  Still, I wrote a lot about what I knew then: pain. Crushing pain. Pain that mades me drop to my knees and howl. Mental pain tangled with physical pain. 

I wrote about my pain, and about MFH and I and our story. I wrote as therapy — my therapy, not anyone else’s. I wrote because I felt alone and like there wasn’t a single person in the world who would or could understand this incredible pain. But I also knew that wasn’t true. Because if I felt alone, there were millions more in this world who also have experienced a pain this deep and felt alone. And so I wrote with the hope that if even one person somewhere in the world read a post, connected with it and felt a little less alone then what I put out into the world was worth it. 

So I wrote and wrote and wrote. I wrote about the grief I knew at the time. And I interspersed it with life. But there was much sadness, much anger. Humour as well. But it is the story of a woman lost. 

As the years have passed, I notice that how I write and what I write about is changing. I’m still lost (I’ll be forever lost) but not the lost where I was merely existing. This lost is the lost of a woman living.

What does this all have to do with writing about grief? Is this blog even about grief? 

I think it is. 

For me, grief is part of life. And, like much of life, there are choices within grief. I can choose how I want to grieve. I can choose how I want to remember and how I want to celebrate. I can choose to allow myself to feel the emotions that stir on any given day or I can choose to suppress them. I can choose to freeze myself in time, live in a cocoon of grief, or I can choose to take steps forward and create a new path.

 

Choosing to write a new chapter doesn’t mean it’s not part of a book. A new chapter is simply part of my story. The story contains love. It contains grief. Both live together, walk hand in hand together. They always will. 

I am writing this new chapter because it is one option presented within my grief. The option to live, experience adventures and opportunities. It all stems from grief. Creating this chapter and living this life is how I express my grief now. It’s how I honour myself and MFH — with a life that honours the past, celebrates the present and is excited about the future. 

So, if my posts talk a little less about MFH and our life together, it’s not because I’ve left him behind or forgotten him. It’s not that I don’t have moments of sadness and miss him deeply. 

If my posts focus more on what I’m doing and thinking, it’s because my grief has brought me to this place — the story of a woman trying to get her shit together realizing that the next chapter is now.