I truly appraiate everyone’s response to my post. Like I said, I wrote it spur of the moment and it’s very unlike me to be that unguarded (truthful) about how I feel.

Jasmine-3, your words actually threw me for a couple of days. I read them several time and was moved by them. I don’t think I can recognize at all how far along I am, how clear I am, or to true extent of my own pain. I think I can only hear the echoes, the shadows of everything that has happened. The funny thing is that I’m starting to realize that this experience has actually softened my heart rather than hardened it. I tear up other little things now and that would never have happened to me before. While I was compassionate before, my heart now overflows with compassion for those in pain and there are a lot of souls in pain out there.

However, I think I’ve used that new compassion, that new love, for other people and have never really focused it back on myself. I really don’t think I’ve been very kind to myself as I look back.

It’s funny, about a month after my wife died I went on a long road trip. Completely by myself with no real destination. For some reason, I kept listening to the Sting album …Nothing Like the Sun, which came out my senior year of high school. Particularly the line from song The Lazarus Heart kept ringing in my ears for days and maybe week:

“There was a wound in his flesh so deep and wide
From the wound a lovely flower grew
From somewhere deep inside”

It’s funny, I completely forgot about that up until the moment I was writing this.

Jodi, I think you are right. I don’t think that I am nearly as gentle to myself as I need to be. If this happened to someone else I would be much more kind and patient with them than I am with myself.

Jeena, thanks for the encouragement. I truly hope you are doing well with your own feelings.

Chris, I think your are right also, I don’t think I recognize that what I’m feeling is an extension of my grieving.

…I’m hoping that lovely flow blooms soon.