A Smiling Young Widow

This is the title Claire Bidwell Smith gave to her book, and honestly it rings very true –though of course with the caveat that there really are no linear stages of grief, it is a squiggly messy route through it.

As I look back, anxiety was a big theme of year two of my grief. At some soon point after the second anniversary of Tom’s death I wrote:

Early on I felt I was getting good at checking in on myself – noticing whatever emotions were coming up and giving the space for each to be felt, understanding a bit more of what I needed. But this last bit has felt like a whole other beast.

I’ve been pondering if perhaps earlier grief was easier to understand – sadness and devastation or smiling at memories and photos makes sense. But now as I try to carry-on living, extra emotions swirl around along with the old familiars. I can’t label them all, but lately they like to show up like an overall general anxiety I can literally feel pulsing through my body. Or I slip back into terrible nights of sleep. I’m working on trying to let go of my need to understand why it’s here, acknowledging that things will continue to change – the waves are far from over. Maybe it’s another phase of my grief I’ll understand more once I’m through it. For now, it’s just … weird.

I’ve never been an anxious person. My mind never really went to worst-case scenarios or spiralled this much. Anyone watch This Is Us? Randall and Beth have a sort of game they do together where they name the worst thing that could happen just to get it out there. I never did that, but if I had, I still would never have imagined THIS. My brain would never ever have jumped to my husband dying suddenly young, and especially not from a suicide.

I wasn’t anxious right away in this. When I was driving myself the 3.5 hours to the hospital after I heard Tom was in the ICU – I wasn’t anxious. I was worried, of course, but it was so different. A stress response where all my senses were online and heightened, but there was also a calm as I knew I would take charge of this. We’d figure this out, together. We’d get through it. together, I had learnt to lean on that strength that came from Tom and Les togetherness. There was absolutely going to be a solution to this.

Anxiety worsened for me once the permanence of the loss sank in. I think this coincided with my overall capacity depleting too, as the shock started to wear off and the enormity of this all started to hit. It’s an interesting thing when that sense of dread or anxiety bubbles up… there’s no convincing yourself that the worst-case scenario won’t come true when it already did.

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Anxiety as Just Another Visitor

In her book, Claire suggests thinking of anxiety a visitor – sure it’s a really annoying visitor, but still just a temporary visitor. You might not be happy about the visitor, but you still have to open the door and allow that anxiety have its visit. Of course, anxiety isn’t one of the “nice” emotions you look forward to having over – at first I had a lot of resistance to it. Still now I’d rather she not visit too often, but I do feel I welcomed her enough to be listened to. I’ve learned to lean into the “I am not my emotions” for a lot of feelings that pop-up and that includes anxiety. Listen and learn, but try not to identify as being anxious. Avoid the need to find justification or detail an origin story of this emotion. 

I’m not going to say I’m entirely through feeling anxious about my future, but I certainly am in a much better space. I’m going to share a bit about what I’ve learnt as I reflect back on my complicated relationship with anxiety showing up alongside grief, with a fair bit of the insight coming from Claire’s book – she is a licensed therapist and also has her fair share of personal grief experience, so shares her expertise from both sides.

It Makes Perfect Sense to be Anxious After Loss

Anxiety makes a lot of sense in grief. There are the practical pieces that show up after losing your spouse – from like hey now I am the only one responsible for all the bills to get paid but I can’t even bear to look at our bank accounts, to I’ve had a really hard day and am wishing so desperately my person was her to give me a big ol regulation hug. Then there are the existential level ones too that come along with the fact that your whole world has turned upside down.

Claire normalizes the experience of anxiety in grief, offering the question “Why shouldn’t your body react this way?” It almost would be weird if it didn’t. It’s only natural to experience some sort of anxiety after loss. We expected our world to be one way, and then it did the complete opposite. How could our nervous systems not respond?

Claire shared that people often come to her with a newfound anxiety around the 6-18 month mark after their loss, right around the time you start to comprehend the enormity of the loss. Even if a death is anticipated, there’s still a level of shock. Claire suggests we need to “steep in it” – I liked that wording – noting that when grief anxiety pops up, there is almost always more processing to be done there. She says grief is a reflection of our relationships; the deeper and more complex the grief, the deeper and more intense the relationship was (whether good or bad).

In The Grieving Body, Dr. Mary-Frances O’Connnor shares how after her mom died she realized, from both attachment theory and Buddhist teachings, that they had made up one system together. It wasn’t just about what each offered to the other. Nothing can replace the “relationship history” we have with someone – there is a physiological aspect to our relationships, a uniqueness in how our body produces opioids in a relationship with enduring bonds. We don’t just lose a person, we lose the relationship system our bodies co-created with them.

You truly can’t grasp how losing your person will hit until it happens. You can be enlightened AF and have done a ton of healing work, but you still have to figure out a way to exist in this very human experience. As a young, childless widow I was left feeling like I was starting this all from scratch – trying to figure out who I was now and how I wanted to show up in this world.  I was questioning everything – my strengths and values, how I wanted to show up in the world, whether I could even trust myself. No wonder anxiety visited. 

When a Loss Takes the Future With It

I can’t make a five-year or ten-year plan. That kind of planning belongs to people who haven’t been hit with world-rearranging loss. I used to be like that too, dreaming and planning for the future. Then I was forced to give up control, confronting the truth that we don’t always get a choice and sometimes things just happen. 

After a big loss, fear becomes a familiar companion. How could I possibly commit to anything now? Who am I to dare plan or imagine something good? My life before that day was amazing. I had my handsome, caring, funny husband. We built a beautiful home. We had both the means and capable bodies to enjoy activities we wanted to do. We travelled and did the cool trips. My life truly felt too good to be true… then suddenly here I am living a reality I never could have imagined being hit with.

The Power of Small 

I wrote previously about how finding little bits of awe can be an antidote to anxiety. There’s an episode of the Happiness Podcast that talks about “little p” and “big P” purpose. The guest shared how he followed the right path and responsibly became a doctor as the way to help everyone and then found himself super burnt-out, which he took as a signal that in fact he was not living in line with his purpose. He suggests we need to shift our focus away from big purpose questions to instead consider the small things we enjoy. Building more of what brings us joy into our lives, reveals “little p” in action. Instead of obsessing about the grand meaning of your life, notice what brings you joy and do more of that. Let the outcome matter less. It’s about looking inward for what you find purpose in, not looking outwards at what others might consider a worthy purpose. 

I have found this idea to be ridiculously helpful. It’s one I come back to a lot. I’ve expanded it beyond purpose to help frame anxiety too. Anxiety lives on a spectrum too. There’s “big A” anxiety and “little a” anxiety. “Little a” shows up in the day-to-day. But Big A? Oh that beast arrives in questions like: Who else am I going to lose soon? What is the meaning of our lives? What purpose was I meant to find in going through this? Existential level anxiety. Big questions that make complete sense to show up after your life seems to implode, but they are impossible-to-answer questions at the best of times and never mind when navigating grief. 

This is where I have learnt to lean into the “little p” purposes. Take the pressure off a bit by focusing on smaller questions like: What would add some joy to my day today? How am I going to get out in nature? Which relationships are already bringing light into my life and what small things will I do to nurture those? 

It’s another way staying grounded in the present, rather than spiralling into the future. These are decisions for today or maybe this month. Of course the little things can become the big things, but thinking about them as “little” does take pressure off that they don’t need to be. 

Small steps have been important. It really did start out with the smallest things, like maybe it was a question of: Where would I enjoy sipping my coffee slowly? Who is one person I will talk to today? Progress was made but really slowly, like making it to the point I could sign-up for a class that ran for a whole seven weeks – perhaps I should note that I do not have it in me to not show up to something once I’ve signed up, so this really was a big commitment step – or making it to the point where I could book a trip that is four months away. These little things that wouldn’t have been anything before, are big things for me now.

Finding My Feet

The opposite of anxiety isn’t calm, it’s trust. Finding that trust again takes time. For months my answer to “How are you doing these days?” was “I’m still kind of finding my feet.” I still am, but I’m also learning to trust that this is a process. I don’t need a five-year plan, I only need to find the next small step to take.

It’s been a change for me to not be someone with a plan, but to rather approach things with the “I’m trying this out” attitude. I often can imagine Tom chuckling away, as this certainly wasn’t the attitude his wife had to planning things!