After my late husband died, I felt as though the floor had fallen out from beneath me and all the walls around me had collapsed.

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I was free-falling through darkness, with nothing to grab onto—nothing that could slow or stop my fall into the emptiness.

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It was terrifying. Lonely. Bewildering.

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Grief wasn’t only emotional. It was physical. My heart actually hurt, and my whole body carried the shock.

 

Nothing felt steady or familiar.

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I had been part of a “we.” We shared a family and a life—routines, decisions, memories, plans, and all the ordinary moments that are so easy to take for granted. Then I had to begin figuring out who I was apart from who my late husband and I had been together.

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I wish I could say there was one thing that helped me find solid ground again, but there wasn’t. Grief support is not one-size-fits-all. Some of what was available simply didn’t fit, and I had to learn that it was okay to say so.

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Bit by bit, I found the people, practices, resources, and spaces that did fit. They didn’t take away my grief, but they gave me places to rest within it.

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My faith held me when I couldn’t hold myself. It didn’t give me easy answers or make the pain disappear. It gave me somewhere to bring my fear, anger, sorrow, and questions.

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At my late husband’s funeral, I had someone else share words I had written because I couldn’t speak them myself. I wrote that our family had been shattered. I thought of kintsugi, the Japanese art of putting broken pottery back together with gold. I held onto the hope that, in His time, God would help us gather the broken pieces and bless our brokenness with His gold—not hiding the cracks, but meeting us there and helping us find a way to live again.

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I also carried my late husband’s love and zest for life with me. Remembering how he loved me and embraced life didn’t make moving forward easy, but those memories became part of what encouraged me to keep living.

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The changes came in very small ways.

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I began calling difficult periods “low moments” instead of declaring the entire day bad. That small shift reminded me that a painful moment didn’t have to take everything else with it. I could feel it and give myself what I needed without deciding the whole day was lost.

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I learned to look differently at some of the inappropriate comments and questions people offered. Sometimes their words came from discomfort or not knowing what to say. That didn’t make them hurt less, but I could answer, change the subject, set a boundary, or decide that a question didn’t need an answer.

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Slowly, I began learning who I was on my own while still honouring who my late husband and I had been together. Moving forward did not mean leaving him behind.

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My life has also grown to include love again. I am now remarried and deeply grateful for a husband who supports me, honours the parts of my story that came before our own, and encourages the work that has grown from my grief. Loving again has not erased the love that came before or the grief that remains. My heart has learned to hold both.

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Learning to live with grief has brought its own kind of growing pains. I sometimes think of it as strengthening my “grief muscles.” I cannot change what happened or control what comes next, but I can make choices about how I care for myself and meet the unknown. Each wave I move through, each low moment I allow to pass, and each boundary I set slowly strengthens my ability to live with what cannot simply be put down.

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There are still moments when the ground shifts beneath me, but I no longer feel as though I am only free-falling.

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I have found things to hold on to: my faith, support that fits me, the love I have known, the love that surrounds me now, and a growing trust in my ability to keep going.

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Perhaps these are some of the places where the gold has begun to show—not because the brokenness disappeared, but because God has continued to meet me within it, in His time.

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I don’t believe grief ends, because love doesn’t end. Continuing to live isn’t about leaving either one behind. It is about continuing to grow and discovering how to make room for both in the life still unfolding. For as long as I am here, I want to meet that life with open hands, willing to keep learning what that means. 

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