It felt so personal and individual. I felt as though it had never happened to anyone and that no one could ever understand.
I was alone. After years and years of being a we, I was a me. After years and years I was alone. The sound of silence surrounding me was deafening.
I was all grown-up, well past grown-up, and yet, I had never needed my Mom more. I had never felt so lost or confused.
And yet, family, friends, and myself all expected me to do what I'd always done - identify the pain, find a solution and move on.
It just wasn't that easy.
My compass (and my dreams) (and my money) was gone. I couldn't find North.
I tried a lot of things:
*Therapy.
*Moving.
*Jobs.
*Financial Professionals.
*Different Hobbies
*Dating sites (oh yuck).
Rinse and repeat
And yet, I felt lost, alone, and confused.
Oh, and did I say that I felt alone. The kind of alone that has nothing to do with the number of people I was interacting with or or activities I did during a day.
Not just lonely.........Only. I felt only. The only person in my universe.
BUT. I. WASN'T. ONLY.
There are so many of us out there.
As we reach a certain age, we can separate. Life can separate us, so that when we find ourselves experiencing that inevitable loss - widowhood, divorce, life-altering ill health - and our compass is gone and we are too old for parents and we are too young for our kids to understand and our friends are wrestling with major life changes of their own - when we find ourselves experiencing that life altering loss, we are really, really lost, and yet, we aren't alone.
I WASN'T THE ONLY. In fact, there are more of us than there have ever been at any time in history.
It took a while, but I when I took the blinders off, still wet with my tears, I saw others. Women who had been where I had been.
When I took the cotton of my own grief out of my ears I could listen to their wisdom.
When I could take the binding sweater of a life that had shrunk off I could reach for them.
We are here. We stand together to fight off the loss and the darkness.
The blues zones of longevity all have vastly different locations, different diets and lifestyles but what their common denominator is community. Its community that heals us and gives us back our lives.
I met women who were wandering and when I called out they called back. We whispered together about our fears.
I realized the real loss wasn't just losing the person but losing all our dreams. The future that we had hoped and planned for over the years was gone. What had taken years to create had evaporated in an instant and the calendar said that we didn't have the same length of time to build new one
The real fear was that in putting our lives back together we would just be old alone women in single homes with TV tables. Or old women desperately hooking up with needy old alone men.
I decided that we didn't want to just tick off the years left, I wanted to live a full wide life. That meant making new dreams. Messy dreams. taking risks.
We aren't too old.
There isn't a rule book for us. I began to hack away and create new paths, not just forward.
It's taken a courage I didn't know I possessed. I can't do it alone
Other women are the key...our combined strength as turned me/we into a team of super heroes caring for ourselves. And each other
The world needs strong women
Women who will lift others up,
who will love and be loved.
Those who live bravely.
Women who are both tender and fierce.
Women of indomitable will
-Amy Tenney
As Always,
Beth
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