Is it supposed to hurt this much?

It hurts intensely just to breath.

Everything externally around you or internally within you seems to trigger stabs directly into your heart.

You feel gutted out, as if just a shell remains

The center of your being feels shattered. A high magnitude earthquake has struck with far reaching damages beyond repair. Many days life feels like a total loss.

You may be physically standing but in every possible way, you are mentally and emotionally on the floor, just barely crawling, feeling too weak to do anything. You are drowning in the rapids and it takes all your strength just to try to resist the undertow.

You have this intense longing just to be with your husband, which seems to make people worry that you are trying to bail on life, but you are not. You feel tethered to him so where he is, that is where you have spent years longing to be. People just don’t get it. You stand in a crowd or strangers or even friends and family and yet feel completely alone. This for many is the real pain of grieving the loss of your spouse. Let’s normalize the degree of pain involved in losing your husband.

For many wives, he was life’s dearest partner, her soulmate, her best friend, her co-parent, the father of her children, her teammate, her leader, her other half, the love of her life, “Her person,” the other half of a God designed one flesh relationship that bound her closer to him than any other human being on the planet, her co-decision maker, the sharer of future dreams, her shoulder to cry on, her confidant, her sense of protection and safety. He may have been the person that knew her more than any other on the planet, yet loved her most despite all the flaws he knew about. He was the one she imagined beside her for all of her life. Together she formed an identity with him that was their very own as a couple, and she may have no idea who she truly is apart from her role as his wife and the mother of their children. He was the one she started and ended each day with, and now the silence of his absence feels so loud, it is screaming at her.  Their two lives grew together as one for years, then suddenly he is ripped out of her life like a sudden yanking out of the roots.  The pain of these things and the shock of the adjustment to widowhood is absolutely unreal.

Or perhaps you feel a pain far less than these. Reading this may seem over dramatic to you or harder to relate to and you may wonder if it is bad or wrong not to feel such a deep sense of sorrow.

Maybe you feel a sense of relief that the suffering of your beloved has ended.

Maybe a mixture of anger, or a greater sense of freedom and other complex emotions, because things in your marriage weren’t what you hoped they would be prior to his death.

It is ok. All is ok. You are not wrong to grieve in your own way that is yours and yours alone. You have every right to feel all that you are feeling and then some. Please don’t ever feel you have to give anyone the power to dictate the way you should be grieving. Reach for help when you know you are in need. When the emotions are too much to bear, too complex to sort through, or maybe even too scary, too dark, or too depressing. Reach for the help that you need from the people and professionals in your life that care for you and are able and willing to help. And from my heart to yours, please know that the God who made you, loves you very much (even though in the midst of the pain it doesn’t always feel like it…..and believe me, I know what it is to wrestle with God about pain, and if you are wrestling with that too, it’s ok, he understands).

In Hope & Prayers,

From This Widow Mama

About Dorothy Swanson

Dorothy lost her beloved husband Oct 2021 to a very unexpected bacterial pneumonia that quickly became septic shock. Her other half and best friend was born with a serious congenital heart defect. Because of that, she had always feared the possibility of being a widow, but she thought it would be more likely due to his heart, and more likely when her husband was in his 50s after the children were grown. Instead, he graduated to heaven just one week before turning 34. Dorothy was 36 with young sons ages 5 and 16 months who adored their Daddy. In less than 48 hours, the life Dorothy and her beloved husband so carefully built together shattered. They were blessed to share just over 8 wonderful, joyous and fun years of marriage. While her heart is so thankful to God for having had their journey together, she has struggled since his death with feeling hurt and let down by God. She has felt so devastated that their love story was short and ended so abruptly. Join her as she shares her unfolding journey of grasping to faith in Christ as she journeys through love, loss, single parenthood, honoring her husband's legacy and guiding her sons through their grief and life without Daddy.