Happy ever after is what we thought we were getting when we got married. The only problem is we did not get our happy endings. And we started our widowhood journeys. While we all joined this club for the same reason, we are all on different paths.
You deserve to be happy has been something that has been said to me recently by many people as they learn that I have moved on and started dating. It is something that normally upsets me and I said as much to the man I am dating yesterday.
Then I started to think about the you deserve to be happy statement I realized that it is most fitting to all of us on this journey.
We deserve to be happy no matter what that looks like for us. If that is moving on and finding happiness with another or it means staying single.
You deserve to be happy means figuring out who you are and what makes you happy not what anyone tells you it looks like.
I spent a year and some months just figuring out what my happiness looked like on my own. I did not go looking for a new relationship I just found it when I was not looking.
You deserve to be happy. Greif makes us think that we can never truly ever be happy again.
That every time we find it something else will happen. But we can have happiness again. Yes, there will be days that we will be upset due to something but that doesn’t mean that happiness is not something we can achieve.
Walking in nature makes me happy. Drawing and getting things out of my head makes me happy. I was happy before I started dating someone and that is what makes this work for me.
You deserve to be happy. No one can tell you what that looks like only you can know what that is going to make you happy.
Remember that you deserve to be happy and yes it takes time but you need to figure out that what that looks like.
About Laurel Snook
Laurel became a young widow on October 2, 2020, her husband Matt had a heart attack he was only 37. Matt was a juvenile diabetic and they always knew he would die young but she never thought that she could be a widow at 32. Navigating grief with anxiety, regrets and guilt have been a struggle for Laurel. They had gotten into a fight days before he died and they had talked about divorce. One of the things that helped her the most is finding other widows who understood the pain she was feeling. In February she decided to start writing her story. Self-care is something else she started to do daily and art has become her outlet to get what she is feeling out which she shares on her Instagram. Being a young widow comes with its own challenges but we are not alone in this journey.
You can find her on Instagram @HealingPorcupine or her personal blog link- Healingporcupine.com.