A Widow Pep Talk - It's Time to Celebrate Our Wins
Christmas can be an exceptionally difficult time of year for widows. Being surrounded by families celebrating the festive season can inflame our grief and re-awaken painful memories of happier times that we used to spend with our partners. Receiving cards from others filled with their highlights of the year just gone, or social media notifications of people’s plans for the future can simply reinforce our loss and remind us of the future with our loved one that we had mapped but will never now enjoy. It’s therefore common for many of us to take a few steps back in our grief journey over the Christmas period, as we become overwhelmed by the acuteness of our loss.
So with this tricky holiday season fast approaching, I wanted to give you a little pep talk - a few short words of encouragement that will help you realise how courageous, inspiring and incredible you are. I want us to be able to reframe Christmas so that it becomes a time of positive reflection, an opportunity for us to celebrate our wins, acknowledge how well we’ve been doing and how far we’ve come. By celebrating our resilience, embracing our inner-strength and recognising all we have accomplished over the past year, we can start to accelerate our path towards hope, healing and happiness.
Acknowledging our accomplishments when we’re consumed by grief can feel really challenging. Not only does it involve a conscious decision to look back and reflect on things we’ve done well, which takes effort, something that’s not always easy to expend when we’re emotionally exhausted, but there’s also a lot of guilt attached to acknowledging how far we’ve come.
Somehow we believe that recognising our achievements means that we’re suddenly ‘over’ our loved one, that we’re no longer grieving for them, that we have moved on from them and that all of this somehow diminishes the love we hold for them. As we wed ourselves to this unhelpful narrative, it starts to become our truth and as we continue to layer our suffering with this additional sense of wrongdoing, our grief begins to feel heavier and harder to work through.
In fact, in grief as in life these days, it’s all too easy to judge and berate ourselves, to focus on what we haven’t done, what we’re not keeping up with and what everyone else is doing, rather than the things we have achieved. Sadly, we live in a world now where judgement (self-judgement or judging others), shame and lack of self-worth are built into the fabric of our society, where comparing ourselves against others and putting ourselves down has become second nature. But such judgements and comparisons are dangerous, especially in grief - they compound our pain and prevent us from healing. We are all unique. Our relationships with the ones we lost are unique, our grief is unique and how we respond to it is unique - not better, or worse. Just different.
So I’m here to remind you that giving ourselves permission to recognise our accomplishments and to feel proud of ourselves doesn’t take anything away from our grief. It doesn’t mean we don’t love or need our person anymore. It doesn’t mean we’re no longer grieving. And it doesn’t make us a bad person. It simply means that we are surviving and adapting to what is unquestionably one of the most devastating and painful experiences anyone can endure. It’s a testament to our strength and our resilience and our determination to push on in the most unbearable of circumstances - to live despite every fibre of our being wanting to shut ourselves away from the world.
In fact psychologists Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut propose a dual process mode of grief, in which we oscillate between thinking about our loved one and dealing with the thoughts, feelings and actions that stem from their passing and getting on with the mundanity of our daily life, which helps to distract us from our pain and provide us with a few moments of much needed respite. Stroebe and Schut argue that focusing on day-to-day activities such as watching telly, exercising and seeing friends, rather than being a form of repressed emotion is actually a healthy way of coping with grief. Throughout my journey as a widow, I have learnt that grief and growth can co-exist and that whilst our grief never disappears, we learn to grow around it as we try new experiences and develop.
So whether you’ve replied to a friend, completed some widow admin, or, on those really dark days when our grief smothers us, you’ve managed to get out of bed, make a cup of tea, take a shower, or even just read this blog post - congratulate yourself. Be proud of that. Understand the enormity of what you’ve achieved. By engaging in these restorative activities (however inconsequential you may feel they are) - you are taking responsibility for your healing. Don’t tear yourself down and belittle your accomplishment. Remember that just continuing to exist in a world without your loved one is monumental.
As a widow coach, I often talk about how we need to start being kinder to ourselves. I explore ways we can shift our internal dialogue which tends to gloss over the things we do day-to-day with the words, ‘Well, what choice have I got? I’ve got to do it’. The truth is we do have a choice. We could choose not to get up, shower and make a cup of tea. We could choose to isolate ourselves and withdraw from the world. We could let the paperwork pile up. But we don’t. We are making a conscious decision to turn and face our fears, to navigate this new and chaotic world we find ourselves in and push ourselves to achieve things we never thought possible. We are brave. We are amazing. And we are inspiring.
And let’s be honest - to advocate for ourselves is not easy. To be our own agent of change, when life as we know it has disintegrated around us can feel impossible. It takes so much courage and strength but that’s what makes it so worthy of recognition and celebration. However, if feeling proud and congratulating yourself feels like a step too far, consider finding another way of acknowledging your achievements. Whether that’s just jotting them down in a journal and reflecting on them from time to time, treating yourself to something once you’ve accomplished your goal or using positive affirmations to reinforce your self-worth - finding some way of sitting in that space, validating yourself and being your own cheerleader will be key to your healing. We sadly
no longer have our biggest champion waiting for us when we get home to share in and celebrate our good news. And so it becomes even more critical that we learn to do this for ourselves, in whatever way we find most comfortable.
For further information on how we can make positive choices during our grief, check out my blog, ‘Grieving positively not perfectly’, which provides advice on how grieving positively provides us with an invaluable opportunity to reconnect with ourselves, better understand our needs and proactively shape our healing journey.
Grief is without doubt one of the most earth-shattering, life-altering events that any of us will go through. Our brains are hardwired to form connections and nurture relationships with others and so when we lose someone close to us, our brains can struggle to compute that the separation is permanent. As we grapple with this terrifying new normal, as we learn to live with this unwelcome heaviness, we must also leave room for self-compassion. We need to learn, however hard it may feel, to acknowledge and where possible celebrate the progress we make in our grief journey, however tiny and insignificant it may feel. Only by giving ourselves permission to do this will we be able to start rebuilding our lives and forging a path to a brighter and more hopeful future.
If you would like to be part of a supportive community of people who’ve walked in your shoes and who understand your grief, come and join my free Facebook group, ‘Remember’ - a safe space where you can explore your grief, share your truth and learn to be kinder to yourself. Alternatively, if you’ve experienced the loss of a life partner and are looking for some support and guidance as you navigate this traumatic life event, please tune into The Widow Podcast, during which you’ll learn how to accept your grief and discover useful coping strategies and personal development tools that will steer you towards happier and more peaceful days.
