Thursday, September 10, 2009

Happy Birthday Blog

Except I am two days late.
Or if I look at its conception, five months late.
But I really did not start blogging until last September.
When I realized I needed to journal.
When I realized I could not answer the many phone calls or emails about how I was doing.
I could not repeat that I felt like crap even one more time.

And I am ever so grateful for this blog.
It has helped heal me.
It has helped me meet fellow widows and widowers who support me always.
And it has helped my family and friends keep in touch with me.

My goal was to write every day.
I did not meet that goal.
Especially once I went back to school and especially in the last six weeks or so with traveling and school.
But I came pretty close.
And I am pretty proud of myself for not giving up on it.
For blogging on days even when I felt I had nothing to say.
Even though I always had more than just a few words to say.

Thank you for reading.
Thank you for the comments.
Thank you for the emails.
Thank you for being there for me in all the ways strangers can be.

For this next year, I will try to keep blogging.
I will try to explain all the feelings that go along with this mysterious thing called grief.
I will try to explain all the feelings that go along with moving forward.
Because I believe nothing is better than first hand experience to help others.
And I do hope that in some small way I have helped others.

So here is to another year of this crazy ride.

1 comment:

Candice said...

I strongly encourage (nag? cajole? beat you over the head? ;o)) to *NOT* stop writing, especially in the next year...or two...or three. Or longer. I found that it helped to write, to get the stuff out of me and onto some receptacle where I didn't have to bear its weight along with everything else. Private journal, blog...didn't matter what form, but writing really helped me through grief.

And when I stopped writing--especially because it got too hard to do it, as I felt worse, as I had nothing new to say for the depths of sadness that opened up after the first year and after I'd supposedly "moved on"--the grief got worse. No matter how awful it's been, it's at least helped to write, to have proof and record of what went on, even if it was icky or really painful or hard for other people to read.

I'm thrilled to have met you through this venue. I wish we'd never had reason to meet in the first place, were both still happily and obliviously married, but...here we are. And I'm so thankful to have such a wonderful friend who gets it, even from 2000 miles away.

Hugs, Star, and huge congratulations on making it this far!! xoxo