I continued to write while the website was under development, although I couldn’t post the blog. I tried really hard to focus on something other than grief. I would start essays about a happy incident and inevitably death would sneak in; death and grieving. I can’t seem to put a lid on it.
I have moments every day when I feel overwhelmed. I reach for my iPad and set to the task of pulling myself back into life. I dig for happy thoughts but my brain is saturated with sadness, with change, with this new world and that’s all that seems to hit the page.
Writing about this actually seems to help. It helps me figure things out – it has become my coping mechanism. Sometimes revealed on the page is a message I need to hear, a thought that I didn’t know I was thinking. I’m always surprised when it shows up, I have an ah-ha moment. ‘Yes,’ I think, and I learn something new about myself. It’s weird and probably strange and so totally what I need to do that I can’t not do it.
It is my hope that through these posts readers will see the journey of a woman marching through grief, not a woman stuck in it. I feel like I should be moving on, looking at life and laughing at it like I used to do. But I’m not – not yet.
I have moments so blanketed in grief I can’t even see the potential for happiness. And then the darkness passes and the possibility becomes possible. Life will carry on, it has to – only part of me died. I’m making an effort and it could be that even the intention to be happy again is progress. Maybe I am actually marching through grief, albeit slowly.
It’s possible that happy is sneaking into my writing and not the other way around. Maybe my sad thoughts are being interrupted by my intent. This is a journey and a challenge, the road is long and uncharted. Writing about it makes me feel like I’m breaking a trail and posting these thoughts might be making the road a little easier for someone else to travel. Writing about it brings me a sense of calm, hopefully the calm before the happy and not the storm.