The widow?

Microsoft.com

It happened last February when my Valentine’s dinner date(s) consisted of my daughter, brother and sister-in-law.  Not that I was ungrateful for the company – I was - but I was struck by the realization that I was now alone.  Everywhere around me were couples.  Now you might be thinking well duh – you are after all out on Valentine's Day – what did you expect?  Well quite frankly I didn’t expect to be without a Valentine's date at this point in my life.  That wasn’t in the original plan.  Widows are mature, silver-haired grandmothers who’ve earned those endearing facial creases by spending 50 years in the company of the man they chose to spend their lives with – right?  What the heck was I doing with this title?  Fate had certainly dealt me a bad hand.  Months had passed since my husband of 15 years silently slipped from my grasp and here I was – The Widow.  The Widow who was not quite resigned to spend the rest of her life as such and yet uncertain that she was truly strong enough to take the risk loving another partner only to lose them to disease, or age or circumstances completely beyond the ability to predict.  Life comes with no guarantees.  Living life means taking risks and my choice was to get busy living or get busy dying.  I have a daughter too young to be orphaned so I decided to get busy living.

The first step to rebuilding my life, my identity and my future was to take stock of whom I was/was not and where I wanted to go.  Talk about humbling.  Here I was nearly as old as Mattel’s Barbie, twice married, a single parent (now The Widow), etc. and starting over.  I’ve been a daughter, a sister, a friend, an aunt, a wife, a mother, a business owner/entrepreneur, an employee, an employer, a college student, an artist, a working mom, a stay at home mom, the breadwinner sometimes all in the same day.  And suddenly I became a single mom.  I had always been someone for someone and quite frankly at this point in my life I really had no idea who I was.  It’s not that my identity was contingent upon belonging to somebody else, but rather my identity was often surrendered in the name of compromise.  Anyone who has been married or in a long term relationship for some time will know what I’m talking about.   You enter a relationship with your own goals, dreams, hopes and fears and many times you find those things get shelved or pushed to the side in order to accommodate your partner.  

It’s no wonder we struggle to find ourselves again when we’re suddenly single.

Coming up: Finding my identity – Part Two.

Until next time – Keep the faith.