A Smiling Young Widow

The opinions. The comments. The gossip. 
I didn’t expect that, but man it has beomce a part of my grief journey. 

It honestly feels quite terrible to be talked about or to realize how many people now have an opinion on your life. It’s another part of this experience I couldn’t have seen coming.

Sometimes these are subtle. Other times not. 
Sometimes they come from good intentions. Other times not. 

I often hear the, “oh I’m glad to see you’re doing so well”.  Or there’s advice that comes about where I should live or what I should be doing for work. There was someone saying, “oh I’d heard you had gone off to med school”. Or recently something that was said about me when I wasn’t there, and a friend kindly reached out to say that maybe I did need to know about what this person was saying. Oof. Gossip is next level beyond just offering uninvited opinions. Hearing those hurtful comments secondhand, I cried.

Before Tom died my life was pretty run of the mill. I’m quite sure no one was really talking about it, or maybe if they were it was like about a trip we did or our dog. And if they were talking more, well I had the confidence to not care one bit. Gossip was never my thing, and it is especially not my thing now when I’m a shell of my old self. I’m holding myself together by a thread here. I have very little space for the judgement of others, everyone is doing their best in this world.

People talking about me while I’m grieving and figuring out this mess? That’s another piece of this journey that just sucks, so bad.  I hate that I am now in a position where people feel the need? permission? to have an opinion on what’s going in my life. I hate that I can’t just be the typical 30 something person with a husband at home and a regular ol life to live. I already have more than enough to cry about. Taking on other people’s opinions is certainly not needed here.

I apologize if I make grieving look too fun, too easy. If I dare to post things online of me doing activities outside, or visiting with family and friends. If I still smile. Or make small talk. If I manage to write an exam or fake it through a work day. Maybe I do too good a job pretending I can listen to a story or can handle being in a group of people again.

Perhaps I should be showing the real side more?  I should be staying holed up in my house, kinda like what I wish I could do most of the time but I rally to get out knowing that’s better for me in the long run. I should be somehow displaying how it takes serious work to continue to show up in this world. That it takes effort to purposefully find bits of joy. And it’s exhausting. But if I shared that side, then I’d be criticized for dwelling on it. For not getting over my loss. I should be moving on, they’d say.

So what I am trying to do is be authentic to me. Each day I get-up and somehow carry on. It has been 13.5 months and trust me I’m still in hell. To be true to me means most of the processing now happens on my own, or letting in only the people that have proved they are safe. Someone else described it that I’m a warrior who needs to retreat to my own quiet space to reconnect with my inner strength before I can go out into the battle again. I liked that analogy.

I don’t want to be on display. And when I hear of other peoples’ comments, that reinforces my choice. If a person finds it in themselves to criticize someone else’s grief journey? Well they are seriously lucky to not have any firsthand understanding of a devastating loss like this.

I will come back at some point with another post ranting about comments I’ve heard around Tom’s death, but this post is more so a rant for me. You know what’s a success? As I wrote this out I was able to take on much more of a Tom attitude to the outside comments. I can literally hear his voice in my head saying “Les they’re just idiots”, or “Les she’s just a horrible person,” like he would have when I was venting about something. In our old life, I used to be the one that would say oh that’s too harsh Tom and they’re not all bad. Now I kind of agree with Tom more. If you’re the type to gossip about or judge someone else navigating life after a huge loss, then Tom’s conclusion might have been bang-on. I’m really working to get myself back to a place where other people’s words don’t hold power.

I’ll finish off sharing a few poems by Becky Hemsley that I’ve really appreciated lately (these ones are all her website)