6 Things No One Tells You About Grief After Losing a Spouse
What Grief Really Feels Like After Losing a Spouse
Until you experience grief firsthand, you don’t fully understand its depth. When my husband passed away, which was sudden and unexpected, I hadn’t really ever had to think about loss or death or grief before. I was leading, what I thought was, a pretty innocent life up until that point. We were just starting out. I felt like life was just beginning for our little family of 3.
Suddenly, I was a new widow. I was thrown into the deep end of grief and had to sink or swim, like so many of you out there. That was your experience too. Sink or swim. You don’t have a choice.
There were many aspects of grief that took me by surprise. These are the things that no one tells you about. The things we learn as we go through it.
Here are 5 things about grief that truly took me by surprise.
1. The Physical Toll of Grief on Your Body
Even doing the smallest tasks felt exhausting. We expect that grief is going to be highly emotional, but we don’t expect the extreme physical toll of grief. The word “exhaustion” is an understatement. Even just doing things like making phone calls would deplete me. I could do some tasks, then have to take a break. Even though I was bone-tired, I would have hard time sleeping.
This does not bode well for the solo parents out there with little ones at home. I still had my daughter who was still in diapers, who still needed me to be a mom and take care of her. She needed everything from me, including my time and my attention. She wanted to play. She wanted to play outside or play puzzles and it was so hard to pull myself together to gather the energy to be the mom that I needed to be. Even doing a puzzle! That’s not physically straining, but even doing a puzzle was asking a lot out of me at that time. I really had to push through on many of those early days of grief.
2. The Fear Of Living Life On My Own
I have always considered myself to be a pretty independent person. I have always made decisions on my own and for myself. I had done just fine as a functioning adult in the world. I had a career that I loved, that I chose. I had put myself through school. I had my own interests and hobbies. But after my husband died, that brave, functioning, confident person that I always was, well, she disappeared. She left. She went somewhere. I’m not sure where! But she was traumatized and she decided to leave this world for a while.
Life, my circumstances, had thrown me a curve ball that I did not see coming and it destroyed me.
I lost the confident person that I was before. I became scared of everything. I was scared of living a life without him. I didn’t know how I was going to survive without him. I was afraid to be by myself. I had lived by myself prior to being married, so I knew I could do it. I just didn’t trust myself on my own, which was an unfamiliar feeling for me.
I hated it!
I hated that I was living scared. I would become aware of my irrational fears sometimes and get mad at myself for acting that way. It was a battle within myself. One version of me that was scared shitless. And the other version that was telling me, “Snap out of it! Get your ass up and let’s do this!” There was this internal battle going on for a while that was a surprise to me.
3. Feeling Numb: The Apathy That Follows Loss
After losing my husband, I stopped caring about things that had always mattered so much to me. My career, for one. I was a pretty driven individual. I was a go-getter, you could say. I cared about my work. It always mattered to me.
But suddenly, none of it mattered.
I could not care less if I went back to work. I didn’t care about being successful at work. I didn’t see the point. We work. We take time away from our families to go to a job every day. And for what?
Why did any of it matter anymore?
The only thing that mattered to me was my daughter. I only cared about the time I had left on this earth with my family.
Another thing I stopped caring about - eating healthy. Mind you, all of this was temporary. But, in those early days of widowhood, forget about having a well-balanced meal in my house! Spaghetti O’s became a staple. Breakfast dinners happened regularly. Eggs and toast are always easy go-tos in a pinch.
When I talked to podcast guest Jenny Stultz she told me that her daughter ate Costco chocolate muffins every single day for over a year. That was all the effort she could put into it. I loved her honesty! It made me feel better about my own parenting choices!
You make it work. You do what you need to do. Remember that a lot of these things are temporary. You need to give yourself time to ground yourself and get your bearings. Then you can get back to focus on those things that used to matter to you.
4. When Grief Hits Out of Nowhere
There were times when I felt like grief would come from out of nowhere and punch me right in the stomach. This was especially evident when it involved my daughter. In that first year, as a new widow, she would come up to me, on any given day, at any given time and say something like, “I miss my daddy.”
I could never find the right words to say back to her. She would talk about missing her dad and I felt like a thousand knives were stabbing my heart.
I spoke with one widow on the podcast and she said:
“I never thought a person could feel so much pain and still be alive. How can someone experience this much hurt and still be alive?”
I feel those words because I know that level of hurt. Like her, this was one of the biggest surprises of grief for me.
That I could withstand the ache that I felt.
I never thought that feeling would ever go away.
5. How Much Grief Changes You
I became unrecognizable to myself. I remember in those first weeks and months as a new widow, I would go from wanting to be alone to wanting to be surrounded by people. I would go from ignoring phone calls to calling my friends to come over and spend the night at my house, all in the same day.
I felt like my emotions were so volatile. They were all over the place.
I had always been a pretty even-keeled person. A pretty predictable, what-you-see-is-what-you-get, stable person. But after becoming a widow, I had no idea how my days were going to play out.
From one hour to the next, they were different.
Come to find out, this is normal, but I didn’t know that at the time!
It felt so unlike me to be so all over the place. One of the widows that I interviewed on Widow 180: The Podcast told me that it really throws you off when you feel like you don’t even recognize yourself anymore. Your actions are not indicative of the person you have always been in the past. I think this is why widows always tell me they feel like they’re going crazy. It’s because we’re not acting like our normal selves. You never know how you’re going to react to grief. That was another thing that took me by surprise: How unrecognizable I had become to myself.
6. How Long Does Grief Really Last?
I desperately wanted there to be a timeline to grief. I wanted to find the book that would give me the directions on how to get through grief and be done with it. I wanted the instructions that said: Follow these 10 steps and you’ll be done with all of this. But grief does not work that way. There is no finish line, no moment when you just wake up and say, “Whew, I’m done with that now!” Grief will always be there. There’s a saying that goes:
"Why does it take a minute to say hello and forever to say goodbye?”
You hold the love AND the grief in your heart simultaneously and that will never go away. I’ve learned to live with and build a life around it. The pain of loss does soften over time, and the love will always remain.
Related article: Understanding Grief Stages: Metaphors To Find Your Path After Loss
Moving Forward While Carrying Love and Loss Together
If you’ve experienced any of these things, please know you are not alone. There were many things that shocked me about grief. Things that took me by surprise in those first weeks and months after losing my husband.
I had to go through it. I had to experience all of it. We all do.
It’s part of the process. It’s part of the path that leads to healing.
In the beginning, I had no idea what I was doing or what I was supposed to do or what I was supposed to feel. I had no idea what to do with those big emotions of grief. I lost myself for a while. I think a lot of us do. It takes a while for the dust to settle and for you to feel a sense of normalcy again.
You come back to yourself. AND you change. You do both at the same time. You return to the you that you love and recognize, all while growing into a better version of yourself.
Many of the things mentioned in this article are relatable for newer widows.
The newest workbook in the widow 180 Workbook Series just came out recently.
It’s the New To Widowhood? Start Here! Workbook.
This workbook takes you through those first few months of widowhood, the practical things you need to take care and the highly emotional side effects of grief. If you need help, if you need some extra guidance, if you are a new widow, this workbook is for you!
If you’ve been a widow for less than 6 months, you will want to get this workbook!
Click here: https://widow180.kit.com/newwidow
