Discovering How Not Just to Survive but Thrive
You must learn a new way to think before
you can master a new way to be.
~Marianne Williamson
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy,
I came that they may have life
and have abundantly.
~John 10:10
Now to him who is able to do
far more abundantly than all that
we ask or think, according to the
power at work within us.
~Ephesians 3: 20
Since the third knock at my door in life on April 4, 2017 with the news of my beloved’s death, my journey has been to learn and figure out how to continue and follow this new path. I can say arguably, maybe more so than at any other time of my life, I have learned the most. This process of grief and loss is definitely complicated and messy. It’s a fluid and ever-evolving journey. There is so much involved that it can feel as if it’s a large, never-ending, entangled plate of spaghetti. Another way of looking at it is like a blooming onion with endless layers that may become not the least bit savory or delicious. I learned there are no easy answers or written instructions for this process. It’s not like your husband dies, and you’re told, here’s the step-by-step instructions or play-by-plays in the grief and loss playbook of what to do now. That would be just too easy and just great to be handed that when starting this journey.
I was quickly having to face my harsh, unexpected new reality of sudden widowhood and solo parenting of our six- and three-year-old by age 38. All on my own, engulfed by grief and loss, in the initial days and year I was on autopilot, shocked and numb. I literally was doing just what I had to. It was truly like treading to keep my head above water. All I could do was ask what do I have to do next? Something I would soon discover to the contrary was my thinking the first year would be worse. Not so. For me it was actually my saving Grace because I wasn’t really feeling everything yet. Throughout the second year reality truly set in. During the first two-and-a-half years I was feeling stuck all the time in every direction. In any life storm like this one, many of us can find ourselves getting pulled down by the strong undertow and pinned. down. We can become paralyzed, unable to get out from under and find a way to swim back to shore. I know at least for me this was the case. I couldn’t see a way to get unstuck from the mindset I was in. I talked about having to shift, and even though I knew I needed to, I could not get out of the way of my thoughts. Once the shift occurred I felt, oh, okay! Now I can do (fill in the blank) and continue on my path.
In my journey at this point I had the same unchanging thoughts circling like on a hamster wheel that I couldn’t get off. I knew I didn’t want to lose our life together, but I didn’t know what the future held. I could not leave that behind, but we had to move in a new direction. This felt weird to me and painfully wrong. Moving on without John was unbearable and unimaginable. How could I survive apart from him, our love, our story and life together? At times I felt as if I were going at a snail’s pace, further backward than forwards. However, a defining moment came in December of 2018, one that completely changed the trajectory of my journey and how I proceeded forever after. This is where I began the process of going from surviving to thriving in grief and loss.
It was late December of 2018, and at this point in my journey of love, loss and life, I had been traveling for a little over a year and a half. I was fast approaching the two-year mark in April of 2019. On this particular evening before the New Year, my bestie and I decided to hang out at her house. Since our kids are the best of friends, they wanted to hang out, too, which was good for us as a chance to have a girl-time chat. It was a win/win. So that is what we did.
Once the kids were happily playing, my bestie and I went out on her back porch to enjoy the nice evening breeze and our girl talk. We have for the last few years, like so many, thought about what we wanted for the New Year and what our goal would be to strive for. Also, we like to come up with our “word for the year.” In 2018 we decided it would be more of a phrase, “Follow the path!” Although I had been traveling my journey through love, loss and grief the last 18 months plus, at this point, I was feeling very much stuck and couldn’t figure out how to move on. I knew I was nowhere I wanted to be. I wanted what I had before but couldn’t. I was beyond petrified of going forward in a direction that would take me further away from my John, my Noah, our love and our life together. I didn’t know how to continue and risk letting go or forgetting. I didn’t want that. I was truly at a loss.
As my bestie and I sat on her back porch, she chose her word for the year as “bloom” because she wanted to grow, be fruitful, and blossom, as all beautiful things bloom in life. I remember loving it for her, knowing that it was perfect. I remember chatting about my struggle to find my word for the year, and I shared how I felt completely stuck and afraid of losing what I had. Thoughtfully, she was taking it all in. Then, she had a look on her face, as if she had the most brilliant of ideas. Stretching her arms above her head, she reflected:
Okay, I hear you and understand what you are saying.
You want to find a way to continue to move forward,
but you don’t want to forget or lose John.
Yes, that’s right. I can’t do that.
Ohhh maybe…what if you were like a tree?
A tree?
Yes, a tree. Trees are rooted where they are, yet
they grow up and out while still staying in the same spot.
You can’t not grow or you’ll die.
We have to either grow or not grow at all but then we die.
Why not stay in the same spot and just keep growing up but not out?
This is no understatement when I say it was truly like a major light bulb came on producing a profound and huge Ah-ha! moment. My bestie’s idea was immeasurably empowering and transforming, creating a momentous, life-altering shift in my thought process. It completely changed my mindset as I viewed things going forward. This new perspective was so revolutionary that it catapulted me out of being stuck. It was a new direction that pointed me to keep on traveling. That night at my bestie’s house was beyond amazing. I will treasure it always. It was also one of the most memorable snapshots and impactful conversations I’ve ever had. I will keep it in my mind and heart, carrying it with me forever as I continue my journey striving to thrive in all things.
I quickly realized just how big and profound this moment would be for me and how it expanded into so many things, not to mention the catalyst for my story, message and books. It was a breakthrough that changed everything. Returning home, I was so agitated that I couldn’t sleep the whole night because my mind was just going crazy with all these new thoughts, energies and ideas. When I get an idea, to fully understand how to implement it into my life, I break it down carefully into words and their meanings to guide me.
Since I’m a word person, I wanted to see exactly how the word thrive is defined in the dictionary, so I wrote that down. I thought, okay, we know what it means. Then, I went deeper to find, what does that look like? To break it down, I took each letter of thrive and generated a list of related words. For example, for the “t” I wrote down thankfulness, tenacious, tackling things, trust, and truthfulness. The “h” in thrive could point to heal or healing, help, hope and heart. Next comes the “r” and for this I came up with revive, remember, resourceful, resilient, rebuild, receive, rejoice, and rejuvenate.
The ‘“i” in thrive was a little tricky, but I wrote down ignite, infuse, and in tune. Equally the “v” was challenging, but I found vanish, vulnerable, vigor, vivacious, vision and victory. For the last letter “e” I chose words like evolve, examine, and explore. These words to me symbolize and implement the meaning of thrive and seemed most applicable to my process and quest in that season of my life. This exercise helped me not only to understand what it means to thrive but gave a picture of what I needed to look for in my life while striving for it.
Playing with the word and idea of thrive, I just ran with it, and that is what infuses and influences what I have done over the past three years. Thrive has also become the thread or throughline for everything I’m doing right now. As I continue on this quest to thrive, I have discovered something I don’t think people talk about enough. I think there are some days when you achieve certain things which are awesome. It is okay that on a new and different day what was achieved before may not be the same each day. Your ability to achieve may be different from day to day and that very well could look very different. In traveling through grief and loss that is absolutely okay and most likely will be a part of your new reality. One day thriving may be found in the small and simple things and that is your saving grace for that day. Another day you may get to achieve bigger things. Our ability to achieve and thrive does not have to be equal or look the same from one day to the next and every day.
It’s still thriving. You’re still making progress. You’re still growing, so it doesn’t have to be the exact same way each time. Honestly, for better or for worse, there are some days that I’m happy just to get the house clean or laundry done. Other days it’s that my kids are happy or in bed or out the door to school, dressed and on time. Often that can feel like quite an accomplishment. At least for me, the small, simple, daily saving graces are just as important and needed to save the day for me. There are others when I feel like I’m winning and thriving because I got a lot of the bigger things done. So it doesn’t have to be just the same type of activity that looks like thriving. You can define what thriving looks like to you.
Especially in the journey of grief, making progress can be in the big or small things. Often it’s just the small actions that can make the biggest change and really matter. My change came in the mindset shift away from not wanting to move on and releasing the fears that kept me stuck. I found a way to move through and that helped me. Now I see myself as a beautiful, strong, resilient tree rooted in what I didn’t want to leave. No longer stuck or trapped by it, I have found a way to still grow and still be where I want to be.
When I felt that I could move on through my journey of loss and grief, it was in a way that was helpful to me, without having to leave more of what I had already lost. Then I was okay with it. I didn’t have to worry any longer that I was doing something wrong morally that did not fit right with me and my soul, and wrong for where I was in my journey. Prior to the very empowering conversation with my bestie, I was most definitely stuck, but this exchange opened the door to creating a mind shift that gave me hope and opportunity. It took a lot to get to this place, but I knew at that moment that I was okay, and it was okay to embrace a new way of being rooted in what I loved and to grow into what I wanted. This made all the difference in the world. What had once felt like a betrayal was replaced by empowerment to become unstuck and continue my journey striving to thrive.