(This is my grief group. We all lost our husbands in 2024 and met in a support group offered by Hospice. We became friends and have been getting together monthly ever since.)
I spend a lot of time thinking about the life I'm carving out for myself on this side of Eddie's death. It's been 21 months and still I'm figuring out who I am now and what my relationships look like.
I've read a lot about death and grief since Eddie died. I also look at grief stuff regularly on Instagram (they've got my number). Yesterday I stumbled across a lengthy post about widowhood by Whitney Lyn Allen. Concerning relationships, I think she really nails it. It's called "the most profound relationships you will cultivate as a widow." Here's what she had to say:
The Relationship You Will Cultivate With Your New Identity
Widowhood requires radical transformation not only to survive, but to truly thrive after the death of a spouse. You are not the same person you were before you experienced the loss of your other half, the person who made you feel safe and capable, the person who shared the responsibilities of parenting, and the person you imagined growing old beside.
You will become an entirely new person through this process. The work is discovering who that person is. What are your new priorities? What perspectives have been shaped by your pain? What still lights you up, even while carrying a grief that feels unimaginably heavy? What do you want your life to look and feel like within a reality you never would have chosen?
Give yourself permission to become the person you were always capable of becoming, even if this wasn't the path you would have chosen.
The Relationship You Will Cultivate With Yourself
Widowhood is an incredibly isolating experience. You will constantly be confronted with just how lonely the world can feel when the person you did life beside is gone. You'll be tempted to fill that aching void with more people, more plans, more distractions, or even things that ultimately won't serve you. It makes sense. You're trying to fill the space left by someone who was woven into nearly every part of your life.
But the cure for loneliness isn't found in anything external. What begins to soften the sharp edges of loneliness is the relationship you build with yourself and your ability to be alone without always feeling lonely.
Start taking yourself on adventures. Go on dates with yourself. Learn to enjoy the quiet. Build a life that doesn't require someone else to validate your joy or your worth. Become your own source of comfort, safety and companionship.
The Relationship You Will Cultivate With Strangers Who Become Family
The death of a spouse changes you so profoundly that it often creates shifts and rifts in relationships that once felt foundational to your life.
Widowhood also has a beautiful way of introducing you to people you never expected to need. These are the people who will hold space not only for your pain, but also for your growth. They will step into the gaps where others have walked away. They will check on you when you're struggling, make time to see you and listen to your inner world without judgement, without trying to fix you, and without expecting anything in return.
Somehow, these people will help heal the parts of you that were made to feel like a burden. The parts that questioned whether you were too much, not enough, or too broken to be loved.
The Relationship You Will Cultivate With Other Widows
Perhaps one of the most impactful relationships you will cultivate on this excruciating journey is the relationship you build with other widows. They understand the everyday reality of losing the person who made your life make sense in a way no one else can.
These are the people you can text or call at any hour of the day or night in your most vulnerable moments. You never have to explain yourself because they already understand. You never feel judged or dismissed. No topic is off limits, no emotion is too messy, no thought is too dark. They know grief can hold heartbreak, laughter, guilt, anger, hope and love all at the same time because they've lived it too.
Other widows become a lifeline. They remind you that you aren't losing your mind, celebrate the smallest victories with you and quietly stand beside you on the days no one else remembers are hard.
The Relationship You Will Cultivate With Your Late Spouse
Love doesn't end when someone's life does. Our attachment to the person we love is still very much alive, even though the way we're able to express it has to change. The relationship evolves.
Maybe it's seeing a sunset and thinking they would have loved the colors. Maybe it's talking to them on the drive home, writing them letters, celebrating their birthday, cooking their favorite meal, wearing something that reminds you of them or carrying their traditions forward with your children. Maybe it's simply speaking their name so they continue to have a place in your everyday life.
Widowhood teaches you that healing is rarely something we do alone. It's built through hundreds of small acts of kindness, generosity, courage and human connection that slowly make the unbearable feel a little more survivable.
Along the way you'll cultivate relationships you never imagined having. None of these erase the one you lost. They were never meant to.
Instead, they remind you that even after the most devastating loss imaginable, love continues to find new places to grow. Your heart doesn't become smaller because of grief. Somehow, against all odds, it expands.
The love of your life may have died, but your capacity to love, to be loved and to be deeply known did not.
There is still goodness in this world. There are still people who will help carry you. And one day, you'll realize you've become one of those people for someone else.
These inspiring and hopeful thoughts by Whitney Lyn Allen led me to revisit a short video I made in 2020 just before the election. It features pictures I've taken over the years. It's about love, and it feels appropriate here. Enjoy!
watch video here
