growing

A few months after Mike died I stumbled upon a community of fellow widows in the most unlikely of places. Social media! At the time the Hot Young Widows Club was a private Facebook group (they've since changed platforms) with an Instagram presence (still going strong); my wading into that particular online support community seemed to open up into deeper waters, all varieties of people and groups having to do with grief, trauma, recovery, healing. Being a hot young widow is damn isolating, and here were countless people who knew all about it.

In the beginning I couldn't stop reading their stories. I could've spent a week in bed, curled up with my phone, content to slide into so much sadness with nothing to slow my descent. But of course my life doesn't facilitate that kind of thing, and over time I've become more moderate with my online widow world consumption. I even share occasionally, and man am I grateful, because when I do my fellow wids share their hard-won wisdom and dark humor generously and it is always helpful.

The solidarity and sadness and inspiration and wisdom is a big part of why Facebook and Instagram have me hooked. That, and the weird scab-picking thing I do while scrolling through other peoples' intact happy families and active social lives. It's kind of weird, really. Wids affirming this life is fucking hard alongside non-wids sharing photos of their fucking joyful anniversary dates which makes a part of me shrivel and spit and curl up in a ball inside. A part that apparently likes to do that, because I haven't stopped scrolling.

And sometimes, sometimes, a meme wanders onto my Instagram of a gorgeous, thin-in-a-tasteful-way twenty-something woman staring meaningfully off into a sunset that features inspiring words about how grief teaches us to truly love ourselves - or something like that - and touches both ends of the social media universe for me: something that is intended to offer validation to the griever (c'est moi) but also makes the griever feel like a total freak. I am so not staring at the sunset. I am crying in the minivan.

Recently I read the story of a young woman who lost her husband and the more I read, the more irritated I felt. She exuded self-assurance. Her feelings about her partner and their relationship seemed uncomplicated. She took a very long time off work after he died, traveling and exploring herself through creative expression of various sorts. She advocated taking as much time as one needs to heal following a loss and she had a beautiful narrative to share about what had happened to both of them. It all seemed so ... tidy.

And irritating. Very. The shriveled smallness within me reads that version of loss and says: oh, how nice for you. Retreats, faraway beaches, endless travel, the occasional profound encounter with a medium on another continent. Those are great ideas, sure. I would love to "heal" too but what about my children, house, job, cats, HVAC filters, dying houseplants, weird middle-aged health issues? There are so many obligations, so many anchors fixing me to this spot. How do I invite grief to move through me when my own movement can feel so very confined?

But then I had this uncomfortable, familiar suspicion: I maybe hide behind my responsibilities. Not that I don't have a legit bunch of them...but I maybe kinda sorta have always done that. This enneagram type 2 is afraid of even articulating a desire to heal, even as I look around and see the signs of healing in my life miraculously happening despite my ambivalence and without my explicit consent: I can sleep at night, I feel less vigilance and worry, I fixate less on the traumas we shared, I have space and energy to think about what I want in my life now without feeling guilt or anxiety about leaving Mike behind. At least not as much.

Making grief about me and my needs - as many have modeled for me online - feels dangerously close to betraying those I love most. Isn't this about them? When Mike was sick I helped him and the children carry their feelings. They were so big, and so hard. I tried to clear a space in myself to be what they needed then. I was all responsiveness, reassurance. Also exhaustion. Now I spend my days at work helping my clients hold their feelings, then come home and do my best (which is not always pretty, but I'm trying) to be present to my kids in the whirlwind of their activities and ever-changing emotional needs and the race to get homework and dishes and showers in before it gets so late that I feel like a bad mom.

Letting Mike and the kids be at the center of things is a way to let myself off the hook. Avoidance. It's a temptation I think many of us understand. I have always struggled to articulate and take responsibility for my own needs. Going through such terrors with Mike gave me insight and courage I didn't know I had in that department, but it's still super scary. If I say what I want, will I still be a good mom? A good widow? Will I still be worthy of love if I give to myself sometimes rather than slip into the more comfortable and long-established habit of giving to them?

I often instinctively feel my grief should be about Mike. He's the one that suffered, he's the one who is missing every amazing thing that happens on a regular old Monday night around here. But it is also true that he and I traveled that fiery, solitary path together. And yet I am still here, holding these ashes that smudge and darken my hands and eyes. It seems a waste to watch them slowly flutter away on stray gusts of wind; in braver days, I would rather bury them, nourishing my own soil, and wait for something new and surprising to shoulder its green way up out of the ground.

Maybe growing is a better light to move towards than healing, with its whiff of resolution and meme-ready tidiness. This hurts forever. I wouldn't have it any other way. But a girl can do a hell of a lot with open wounds; maybe more than she could before she sustained them. She can risk telling you about her longing to find spaces to exist apart from her identities of mother, therapist, widow, daughter, sister, friend. Her yearning to stretch and move everything: body and soul, spirituality, creativity, sexuality, language, intellect. Her desire to feel her own power, to go somewhere new. To be quiet, to be loud. To be a stranger. To be strange.

Thank you, irritating social media widow. I feel brave today because of you.