A New Year – By Robert Longley
“The day does offer promise,
A chance for something new,
Time for new direction
To make change or two.
This burst of inspiration
Does come but once a year,
A time for something different
And hope that change is near.
How will you use this moment?
What will you choose to change?
What aspect of your story
Are you poised to rearrange?
In truth it’s just illusion;
It’s not about the day,
It’s how you view the future
And challenges in your way…”
Wow! What a year this has been… I haven’t written in my blog in quite sometime, to be honest it is very hard to write raw emotions about losing a loved one and trying to explain a feeling of having your internal organs being ripped right through your chest. How do you tell someone on a piece of paper (or through a computer) that you feel like your world has crumbled around you? How do you write that you fight everyday to not pull the trigger? As I write these words I think back to myself about the past year and how I have had friends, some family and complete strangers tell me how exactly I should grieve… “Oh, just give it a couple of months and you will be good as new,” “you will move on and ‘forget’ all this happened,” and one of my ultimate favorites, “I know exactly how you feel, when I lost my grandmother…”
I am here to tell you, it’s not like losing a grandmother, it’s not like losing a child, it’s not like losing anything else because you lost the one thing that completed you… you lost your spouse. You lost the other person that made you whole, the person you planned your entire life around, the person you were ready to give your whole heart, body and soul to. Losing a spouse is not like losing anything else, BECAUSE IT IS YOUR SPOUSE. I decided at some point through my grief journey to quite trying explain how I feel to other people and I stopped trying to get other people to understand what I was feeling – I began to grasp how I was feeling and began to embrace who I was becoming. Finding the amazing, grounded, and very proud widow that I am. Through this past year I have made mistakes, but who the hell hasn’t? I mean, if we aren’t making mistakes we really aren’t learning or are we? We aren’t living the life we were supposed to live! If we tip toe through life, hiding behind flannel pajamas and Papa John’s pizza because your life ended and just expect to ‘Zombie-Widow’ are way through the rest of our lives… HELL NO, you grab life by the balls just like it did you and you take it back. You give yourself and your beloved hero in heaven the proof you are ready to honor their life by getting your tail out of bed, smiling to the heavens and decide ‘today, I am going to make a difference in this life.’
You never stop grieving, you just learn how to cope and learn how to mold your life around the pain and hurt. You take all that has made you bitter and hate everything life had to offer into a stronger, more vibrant and ready to live (or take life by the balls) person. I never thought 1 year and 3 months ago that I would be sitting on this couch writing to the world that I am actually beginning to live again… I have decided to take what broke me, put me in my darkest hours and make a difference in other people’s lives and in mine. I remember sitting here one night and feeling Joshua’s loving arms fold around me and I finally felt some peace, that was when I decided to go off any medication and take that grief by the balls and feel every raw emotion that I could feel. It was time to find out who Brittany was and it was time for her to come back into the real world and start living.
This year I am making 1 resolution, to make a difference in other people’s lives and to be (maybe a better version) of the woman Joshua fell in love with. I will embrace my grief, hurt and widow hood and and challenge the future and tell life to bring it, because finally… I am ready to enter the world again. Who’s ready?
Love,
A Widow and Her Shoes
~Forever my heart and hero babe~
Cowgirl Grit 