• Guilt maybe about not being the perfect wife or husband
• Guilt of moving forward
• Guilt of not coping

But we must let go of the guilt because

1. There is nothing we can do about the past. No matter how much we regret or relive the moments we cannot change what has happened.
2. Moving forward is not about forgetting the past, it is about accepting the past and thinking towards the future. By not moving forward we won’t bring them back, and remember punishing ourselves will only keep the hurt.
3. Grief is a huge emotion, we will learn to cope but that will come with time. We all learn to cope at different rates and whether you are a fast or slower learner…then both are OK.

Guilt can fester at our soul, and the only positive way of dealing with it is to think about what you want to change for the future so that you won’t have any regrets again.

Post from: Widows Quest

If you were building a house you wouldn’t just sit and look at a piece of ground and hope that a house appeared! So if we want to build a new life we need to think like an architect of our own life. Grief means that we need to rebuild our life.

Design – What kind of life do you want? Design the life that you want to build so that you can have a picture which you can build towards.

Foundations – All life’s – and houses – are built on solid foundations. Grief causes your life to be turned upside down and can shake you to your core. To build for the future you need to come to terms with who you are, what you stand for and what is important in your life. Death may make you feel that your life has ended…but it is only a chapter. The core of your happiness might not be there but in the end what creates happiness is being happy with you.

Building – Once you have the foundation of being happy with you, then you can start laying the bricks to your new life. Brick by brick, step by step….do something that is towards that dream life.

Decorating – Once the structure of your life is solid I like to think of decorating it. This can be finding new companions or new love. You wouldn’t or couldn’t decorate a house until the structure was strong. It is the same during the bereavement process. If you are happy living with just you, in a life that you want then you will find that visitors to your life will start to decorate your world.

Building a house is hard, building a new life after bereavement is hard. There will be set backs, there will be repairs needed! But if you keep building then eventually that new life will form

Post from: Widows Quest

Why?

Because the first step isn’t often the one that helps start to heal the broken heart…in itself. Of course the first time going out, the first time you meet someone, the first time you go on holiday, the first anniversary are all hard…I don’t dispute that at all. However often the first step is surrounded by friends, often the first step is understood by all as a difficult step for a widow or widower.

But following that you have to start progressing on your own, often you don’t enjoy the first experience because of the loneliness and that can make the future even more difficult.

What I would like to say to people feeling like that is this….there is no definitive answer..it may be the first, fifth or fiftieth step you take which is the hardest. But the alternative of removing yourself from life or society is not easy anyway. It feeds depression, it feeds loneliness so what I would think about is this

“This step is hard, it may even be painful but at least it is a step in the right direction”

Post from: Widows Quest

• Stillness – you are so numb that you cannot move without really thinking about it.
• Constant movement – this is when you have to plan the funeral and you are almost in a state of constant movement.
• Laying down - when all the calls have stopped and you are on your own, you just lie there and cry.
• Curled up – as the grief strikes you just cannot face the world, you lie like a baby seeking that love that you miss so much.
• Huddled up like an old lady. This is when you are dragged out and about by people who want you to rejoin life. You don’t want to, you do it because you think you should or to please them. You can’t stand up straight as you feel naked to the world – naked to all the emotion and often pity.
• Stand up tall – this is when you have learned to cope a little better, you know that you can never change what has happened and are starting to face the world again.
• Dancing – you have made it…through the grief and back to happiness!

I wonder whether our conversation strikes a chord with any widows or widowers out there!

Post from: Widows Quest

It made me think about how we choose our coat before we got out – we forecast what we need and choose the coat that will be the most appropriate. It is a cover, it is a cloak to protect our bodies.

In grief we need that protective layer, we need that protective layer for our heart and our soul. Each day we are faced with different emotional ‘forecasts’ and to come through the bereavement process we have to fit how we are feeling with a similar protective layer.

When we feel down we need the smiler layer…..smiles are contagious!

When we feel lonely we need that cloak of friends to surround our heart.

When we feel stronger then we need to remove a layer to allow the world in….

No one else can choose our protective layer for us, we need to be aware of our emotions and forecast the day ahead….then we can ensure we can cope with what life throughs at us. Choose your grief cloak wisely!

Post from: Widows Quest

There is no clear path to recovery, I jump all over the place…one day fine, the other depressed. I even feel sick at times just like a rollercoaster ride.

Maybe this is just me but from now on I think I will see my journey through grief as a rollercoaster….and remember a rollercoaster ride can be exhilarating and there are days when I am so proud of what I achieved that even that emotion consumes me.

Post from: Widows Quest

Maggie left these words as part of her comment to Hope for Widows and Widowers

“Sometimes it is so raw in its awfulness, but in general it has opened layers of myself I could not have imagined existed”

It made me think about our feelings, made me think about how raw feels bad and yet raw in many contexts can be seen as natural, and good. When you think of raw food, then the food is at its purest, it is full of goodness, it may not look perfect, it may look a little ragged and yet it is as near its kind of perfection as it can be.

So this made me think of widows and widowers. Raw may hurt, raw may feel unnatural and yet when you think about it raw means

• Emotionally at our most vulnerable
• Our emotions are the most visible
• We are coping with being peeled back from being an us, to being a me.
• We understand and value life and the natural cycle of life more than ever

I suppose I was thinking that raw may feel unnatural but when you think about it, we are just at our most human. The raw can mean that all the superficial aspects that we build into our lives are  stripped away and we understand that, core to happiness, core to a safe world, core to human beings is the power of love….

Post from: Widows Quest