Once I got to a more stable place in my life I decided to start this blog. I pretty much had two goals in mind. One was to help myself – I thought it might be cathartic to get out all of the “stuff” that’s been floating around in my mind for the past five years. The other was to possibly be of comfort to others who are going through a similar tragedy in their own lives.
I was hoping that if someone could see that they are not alone – that I had been through the worst of it and now coming out the other side in a good place, it might be helpful.
Helping myself is definitely working. I absolutely love writing this. My hope is that people are reading it but even if they weren’t, I would keep writing anyway. I am shocked at how these stories keep pouring out of me. Just when I think I am having “writer’s block” something new will pop into my head and I start writing again.
But what I am most excited about is that more than a few widows have reached out to me. Some were just a quick thank you or just to say that they like reading my blog. Some have written more and told me their stories. I have been communicating with a few of them and this truly makes me so happy.
I have been in contact with two widows that stand out in my mind.
One is a woman in a totally different state who I only had one facebook connection with. Somehow one of her friends came across my blog and forwarded it to her because her husband had very recently passed away. She reached out to me and when I looked on her Facebook wall I noticed that her friend had posted my blog there. When I saw this I had tears in my eyes.
To see that this actually reached someone that I had never met and never heard of just touched me. We have been writing back and forth for the past couple of weeks. If I can say or write something that makes her feel less alone in this crappy situation – I feel like I helped just a little. When she tells me what is going on in her life, I see myself a few years ago. Everyone has their own journey but I feel like I know what she is going through.
The second woman that stands out in my mind has impacted me in a totally different way. Her husband passed away about a year ago and after reading my blog she reached out to me. She lives in my town and we have some mutual friends but had never heard about each other. We wrote back and forth a little and even spoke on the phone once.
In that conversation she told me that what has helped her the most is hot yoga.
She explained how hot yoga was helping her mind as well as her body. Then, she invited me to go to a class with her to try it. I had actually been looking for a new way to exercise because I had gotten pretty lazy over the past year. In the past I have worked out by walking/running on the treadmill and light weight lifting. I had also gotten into spin for a while a couple of years back.
I had never enjoyed working out – I did it because I knew it was good for me but it really always felt like a chore.
This is probably why I had gotten lazy recently – I disliked working out. So I thought yoga might be a good idea – even though I’m a bit of a clutz and have no sense of balance :). But HOT yoga??? I wouldn’t only be afraid of falling down but also passing out! But something in me told me to give it a try.
So I did. I met her on a Friday morning a few weeks ago and tried a hot yoga class. “Hot” is an understatement. I have never sweated so much in my entire life! And I definitely confirmed my clutziness – adding to the fact that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing! I just tried to follow along with what everyone else was doing. Plus the instructor knew that it was my first class so she was so nice and so helpful. I left there thinking that I didn’t hate it – which is a pretty good review for me regarding anything active.
I decided that I could try hot yoga again and I did.
And then again and again….it has only been a few weeks but I have taken a bunch of classes already – and I can’t believe I am saying this but I think I like it! I know it is a good thing when I constantly search the class schedule looking for one that somehow fits into my schedule – instead of looking for every reason why it doesn’t. I think it is an amazing workout and hopefully once I get used to the poses and don’t have to concentrate so hard on doing them correctly, it will become very relaxing.
I don’t want to get too excited because I think there was one point when I thought I really liked spin until I decided I hated it. But this does feel different somehow.
I don’t dread going to hot yoga at all – I want to go.
I actually feel myself getting a little stronger. I am hoping that I stick with this and continue to like it (you can all laugh at my blog in a couple of months when I write about how I hate yoga :)). My hope is that it becomes part of my “moving forward”.
I think my blogging is starting to do what I had hoped it would in many ways – and even in one I didn’t expect at all. Never would I have thought that through my blog I would end up doing hot yoga. So for now I will keep blogging – I guess you never know what is going to happen. This I have learned in good ways as well as bad. Hoping for more of the good – for myself and others.
Namaste 🙂
Stacy was a stay-at-home mom/part-time preschool teacher whose life was turned upside down in 2011 when her husband passed away suddenly of a heart attack. She is raising her two fabulous daughters, now ages 18 and 20, who are turning into wonderful young women. In 2016, she started a blog about her experience as a young widow, The Widow Wears Pink. This led her to write for other publications including Huffington Post, Today.com, Scary Mommy, Grown & Flown, Kveller, Modern Loss, Thought Catalog, and many more. In 2018 she started Living the Second Act with fellow writer Mimi Golub. Today, Stacy and her daughters are happily living their “new normal” while always keeping her husband’s spirit alive.
