Shell here!

Hello Everyone. This post just came out of nowhere. Prepare yourselves, it’s a long one. Some people do not like reading long posts, so I apologize to those. I thank you in advance for reading it.

I had no intention of writing a post today. Jay and I live very busy lives and somedays turn out to be blurs because we are so busy. Just recently, we decided that one day a week we will take the entire day off. We schedule one day off a week and we do not make any plans for that day. We leave the day open, and on that day or the night before, we check in on how we are feeling before we plan our free day. What I mean by taking a day off is no cell phones, no social media, no blog, no school, no outside world; just the two of us freely enjoying the day as we choose. We have learned that these days are very important for our sanity, mental health and especially to the grief we carry around on a daily basis.

We launched this blog a little over a week ago and as excited we are to share our journey with everyone, it was a huge step for us. For the past five years, Jay and I have become accustomed to “hiding” from the outside world. I do not mean we were hermits and never socialized. What I do mean is that we never shared our thoughts and feelings with people or went out of our way to hang out with others. We still went and did things, but we did them alone because it was easier to be alone than to explain our broken hearts and vulnerability to others. We both felt broken, sad, devastated and I will add scared to the mix. We were busy taking care of each other and learning about this grief that had enveloped us.

Within the past year, something inside of us sparked and we started to feel alive again. I would say that for the past five years the grief was so consuming that it was like feeling dead inside. A better way to explain it was a feeling of so much pain that we were unable to feel anything else, which made us feel dead to the world. In the last five years our circle has become very small. I take a lot of responsibility for that. After my husband died, I pretty much shut everyone out. My husband’s family did unspeakable things to my husband, daughter and I while he was sick and dying. They tried their continued torture after his death. For the sake of my daughter and myself, I closed off all communication. Then the closed off communication continued to spread to more people who were full of drama and unnecessary things that we didn’t want in our lives.

You see, I grew up in an abusive alcoholic home, so the only thing I knew was dysfunction. My husband and I met and fell in love, but we both came from dysfunctional families. Our marriage was not perfect, but it was perfect for me. He was the love of my life and forever will be. But we were always surrounded with dysfunction. After he died, there was shift deep down in my soul. I no longer needed or had to put up with dysfunction, so I shut everyone out that would bring unnecessary drama to our lives. I didn’t want the rest of our lives to be dysfunctional and full of crazy drama stuff.

As I look back, I am very proud of my actions and what I did to protect my child and myself. Our lives are super busy now, but with no drama. It is peaceful and calm. That’s something I desired my entire life but never knew how to achieve. After my husband’s death, we had no choice but to rebuild our new lives. In our new lives, I chose calm and peace instead of crazy drama and dysfunction. I am sure I angered a lot of people along the way, but when you survive tragedy you learn what is best for you and your child. I also learned along the way that if I did anger people for doing what is best for my child and me, those people didn’t need to be in our lives.

This brings me to today. Today was our day off. We chose to rest today and watch movies. We are both very tired, and when we get tired our grief can become overwhelming. I have been missing my husband and father very much the last few days. Trust me, I miss them every day, but when I am very tired the tears flow much more easily. One of the movies we finally had the chance to see was Frozen 2. I know it has been out for a while, but to be honest one thing I hate doing is crying in a movie theatre! I am glad we waited and watched it in the comfort of our own home. The song Anna sang, “The Next Right Thing,” is what sparked this post.

It made me reflect on the past and my choices. The words struck at my soul. If you have not seen the movie yet I will not spoil it for you. However, funny thing about me after becoming a widow is that I have to know if someone dies before watching a movie. I need the spoiler alert so I can prepare myself for the upcoming death. Yes, I know it’s fictional, but come on movies have a way of getting to you. Any Marvel fan will completely get what I am saying, LOL.

The song lyrics Anna sang that really got to me were,

“This grief has a gravity,

It pulls me down,

A tiny voice whispers in my mind,

You are lost, hope is gone,

But you must go on,

And do the next right thing.”

Oh my goodness! Since I am grieving, these words struck my soul! These words hit home in a big way. As Jay and I are rebuilding our lives, there are days when grief absolutely pulls us down. There are days when I heard the voice telling me, “He is NEVER coming back”. There are days when I feel lost and have no hope. I can remember back in the beginning, just days after his death where I couldn’t breathe. Days where I had no idea what was to become of us. Days where I had no strength and no will power to move on. On those days I would look at Jay and I would see her father. Something deep down inside of me knew I had to fight forward not just for Jay but for Art. Here I am on the sixth year of grief and I’m writing to complete strangers all over the world, sharing my soul in the hopes of helping others. Yes, it scares the heck out of me! Sharing our journey and coming out of hiding is a huge step for us! I just hope that one person can read our story and know that they are not alone, and that two souls like Jay and I know what your going through. Grief is not easy and I wish I could promise everyone that goes through grief that it goes away. Grief never leaves because our love for the ones we lost never dies, but as we move forward we learn to live with and embrace our grief. I will leave you with the last lyric on Anas song and I will share that I hope you find your strength, courage and believe that you can do this, and you are not alone.

“Take a step

Step again

It is all that I can do!”

Remember: Always be kind to yourself!

Aloha and gratitude,

Jay and Shell