Gratitude and my Grief Journey

It’s August again, and I have been getting reminders that Mike died 10 years ago this month. Sometimes those waves of grief show up again and nearly wipe you out – that happened last Sunday morning. I couldn’t stop those damn tears from flowing!

The Facebook memory that triggered me was a video of a stranger who approached us in an empty New Orleans hotel bar and sang to us “O Sole Mio” in a most amazing, operatic voice. It occurred after enjoying a 26th wedding anniversary dinner and 9 days before Mike was killed. You can hear that amazing video here: A song in New Orleans.

I know you have to feel the feels, or so I have been told. I am making more of an effort to sit with my emotions, acknowledge them for what they are, and not runaway, but it is challenging at times. I don’t like being sad.

This morning while sitting on my lanai here in Florida watching the sunrise, I read a morning meditation on gratitude. I have heard others exclaim that the whole gratitude push is overplayed, but I remember that in those early days of grief, attempting to think of 3 things to be grateful for and playing positive affirmations over and over again really did help me.

When you’ve lost your partner, the word gratitude can feel almost impossible. How can we be thankful when everything feels broken?

One thing I did during those first months was to redirect my brain from thinking about how Mike died, to good memories that we shared. I kept the 6 posterboards from the funeral near a chair in my house and would often sit and look at them remembering all our good times.

In fact, let me share that today would have been our 36th wedding anniversary. I am very grateful for the 26 years we shared as a married couple and the two wonderful sons we were blessed with to raise in our family.

So let me take a minute to say how grateful I am that I have had this blog to use to express myself and share my journey. I am thankful for the friends, family and other widows who have read a few posts and given me positive feedback over the years. The early year posts about wedding rings and surviving the holidays, morphed into moving and retirement, and then planning my own wedding as a widow and of course fun travel blogs.

I love when people ask me about a place I visited. My memory may be slipping, but just this past week I shared posts from blogs about South Africa, Iceland and Savannah with friends about fun things to do in those places. Without the art of writing about my adventures, I’m not sure I’d recall anything!

I am so grateful for my work family back in New York. When Mike died in 2015, I worked as a kindergarten teacher for another 5 years until the fall of 2020. The support from my coworkers and the community was so important during that time. When I did retire, I was grateful to be able to leave all my 30 years of collected books and resources with a young, dynamic new teacher to take my place.

I’m so grateful for my retirement and security with a pension and health insurance. Unfortunately, not all good jobs secure their employees with benefits after they leave their jobs. Knowing I continue to have a monthly payment, and not worrying about how much to take from a 401K account on my own, gives me peace of mind which I am grateful for.

I’m very grateful for my husband Pete who married me 6 years ago when I was trying hard not to be “a stay-at-home, lonely widow“! In our few years together we have made some wonderful memories; many which include travel. He also is comfortable with me writing about my loss and sharing it with others, finding new projects to engage in with all my free time (pickleball, travel, shell crafts, working with horses, etc.) and is a great daddy to our little dog Harry. One of our sayings to each other is “I’m Lucky”.

I think finding things to be grateful for is definitely a good practice. When you’ve lost your partner, the word gratitude can feel almost impossible. How can we be thankful when everything feels broken?

The writer Melody Beattie once said, “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more.” Gratitude isn’t about pretending everything is fine. It’s about noticing the small things: a friendly text or phone call, a quiet morning cup of coffee, a dog who seems happy to see you or even the simple fact that we made it through another day.

Research backs this up. Psychologist Robert Emmons, one of the leading experts on gratitude, found that keeping a gratitude journal, simply writing down a few things you’re thankful for, can increase happiness and even improve physical health. In his book Thanks! How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier, he shares how gratitude practices can reduce depression and foster resilience, even during the hardest times.

If you’re walking this widow’s journey, I encourage you to try it. Start small. Write down one thing a day you’re grateful for. Some days it may just be “I got out of bed.” That counts. Over time, those little notes of thanks can help stitch together a sense of hope.

Because gratitude, even in grief, is not about denying what we’ve lost, it’s about gently opening ourselves to what remains.

As you can imagine, since it is August I do have a trip planned. My son Matt and I had a fun road trip from California to Florida in June, and now Pete, Harry and I will be taking a road trip to spend time with my son Buddy in Maine. Looking forward to seeing friends and family on that trip and escaping these daily heat advisories in Florida!

I’m also getting ready to launch an Etsy store with some fabulous shell creations. I will be participating in our community craft fair and have made way too many shell decorations, trinkets, wine charms, and more. I can also make special orders so stay tuned for an opportunity to check out my little store online.

Thanks for visiting my blog. Have a wonderful day!