Welcome to My World of Widowhood, Healing, and Hope

A therapist and widow shares her journey through grief, healing, and rediscovering life. A space for widowed women who are ready to rediscover life even with grief still in the room.

If you’ve ever stared out the window wondering how to keep going, please know you’re not alone.

If someone told me a little over six years ago that this would be my life, I would’ve broken down on the spot. Because how do you survive what you can’t even imagine?

Alex used to tell people I was the strong one. But losing him stripped me of that badge or at least made me wonder why I ever needed it.

Anyone who has lost their person knows “strong” is one of the last words that fit.

Let’s be honest.

Not when you're waking up to a world you didn’t choose. Not when you're trying to parent through your own tears. Not when you’re learning how to live a life that keeps going without the person you thought would always be in it. Seriously, Alex and I would sit on our porch sipping on our coffees and envisioning adventures, his upcoming retirement, and building another home in Vermont, New Hampshire or Virginia. Seriously, not this.

People mean well when they say you're strong, but they don’t see how hard it is to make even the smallest decisions, the unanswered texts, the nights you lie awake bargaining with the past.

Therefore, I think we need a different word.

Something that holds space for softness, surrender, and survival.

Something more human than heroic.

Because being strong isn’t about holding it all together. It’s allowing yourself to fall apart and still show up the next minute, hour, or day. And you still breathe. Still care. And still wonder what else might be possible , not in spite of the loss, but because something in you refuses to stop believing there’s more.

If you’ve ever been called strong and felt misunderstood, I see you. You are not strong in spite of your grief. You are sacred because of it.

And this.

This messy, honest, sacred middle is what I mean when I say, welcome to my world. This is widowhood.

It’s not always graceful. But it’s real. It’s full of grief. And somehow, strangely enough, still, full of love.

If you’re walking this path too, I hope this space helps you feel a little less alone.

This is widowhood.

This is healing.

This is hope.

And it feels right to open this space now as my beloved Alex’s birthday approaches.

I am not who I once was, but I am learning to love her still.

Thank you for being here, for reading, for feeling this with me. Next week, I’ll be writing something more personal to honor my beloved Alex’s birthday.

Because love doesn’t end. And neither does memory.

I hope you’ll join me.

In grief, in love, always,

Jac

P.S. And I am just wondering, what word would replace "strong" in times like these?

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