Writing Through the Process

I joined a writers group called "A Year to Love" with Ahava Shira before Robin had died.  This was a very fortuitous move as writing through my grieving process has proven to be very therapeutic for me.  Plus at the end of our year, we all put on an art show together showing all our different emotional explorations of the year through different mediums.

My show consisted of a very large portrait of Robin done by Julia Lucich and a cluster of very small portraits of myself to show the contrast of how I felt compared to him.  I wrote:


In January 2014 my husband Robin Gibbard passed away suddenly.  Instantly my life changed.  How I defined myself went from loving wife to widow.  Robin had a huge presence due to his larger then life personality.  I have always felt very small next to him and rather insignificant as most people on Salt Spring know me as Robin's wife.  In this last year I have spent much time and internal exploration redefining who I am and how to move through this process of grief and being a widow.

Plus I created this video.

Doing this art show really pushed me to explore and express how I am feeling and in return is pushing me through this process of grief.  It was exhausting emotionally doing this but now that it is over I feel the rewards of the pressure.  I am able to step back a bit to see my life from a different perspective and move past the sadness.  

I sometimes feel like I am charging through this process like a bull and then in the same moment feel like I am stuck in a hole with no hope of getting out.  It really does feel bizarre and as much support and love that I have around me it feels like a very solitary journey.  But through it all I know I am loved by many and that I was very loved by this crazy man.  

And I will continue to write!

I am ready to Embrace being Alone

I was married for 18 years and it feels very strange to be "alone".  I say I going to embrace it so that I can enjoy living in the moment and the reality of my life.  But it is a struggle.  I absolutely LOVED being married.  I loved making decisions with someone and having a partner in this thing called life.  I loved the title of "wife" and still use it.

I am the kind of person that will talk to people in line ups, on the bus, on my walks, and in a public washroom, I stop and talk to most people who will stop and talk to me.  These people are strangers and have no idea I am a widow and I tell stories of my husband.  To these stangers I live the life of a wife.  I complain and laugh still about the things he does....or did.

He was my life, but my life goes on now without him.  So what is my life?  I am learning, I am going to embrace it.  But I have to admit, there is a lot of it that I hate.  There is also a lot that I love.  It is the things that I love that I will embrace while I grieve what I have lost.  This is me learning.

I'm a Widow? These are my words!

I hate this word, widow.  Doesn't it sound completely black! depressing! and the end of a life.  When I hear the word widow I get a picture in my mind of an emotionally dead women in a black sheer vale over her face dressed in completely black.  She has no future, no hope and definatily no fun!

I didn't want to be identified with this word and yet I use it to title my blog.  Strange, I know.  When I changed my relationship status on "facebook" I called myself single.  Maybe it is part of my anger?  The resentment I feel towards my husband for dying and making me a widow!

But one thing I know is I don't want my life to be over.  I want to be really happy again one day and I want hope for my future.  The word widow gives me absolutely no hope for the future.  But I am coming to terms with a widow is what I am and these are my words.