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Work Off the Grief; Try Exhilaration
We don’t talk about it in “widow world” — or at least, not in the part of the group I connect with. “It” is the sense that life without the person you love sometimes seems too painful to bother with. What’s the point?
I watched my mother lose big parts of her life to depression, never treated but probably very justifiable (since my father cheated on her for years, and she knew). One result of seeing her losses and early death is that I am “strict” with myself when I feel like I’m sliding into despair or what the 12-Step programs call self-pity, which is a dangerous self-indulgence for anyone who has depended on a substance for relief (mine was alcohol, many many MANY years ago).
My self-prescription: Do something hard, challenging, demanding, that you’ll have to pay attention to, instead of staying inside yourself and being sad.
So buying the abandoned property up the road fit perfectly. Not only did all that trash need to be bagged and hauled, but I had to create a home — and fast, because financing the leap meant selling the Old House, the one Dave and I shared, and somehow managing it without interrupting my freelance editing business.
