When you lose your spouse and are suddenly left to navigate life on your own, something changes inside you in a way that’s hard to explain. You gain a new perspective on life…you see what truly matters, you stop worrying about the small things, and you try to keep your priorities straight.
But along with that clarity comes a deep sense of loneliness. You realize that this new way of seeing the world can make you feel completely out of place or that no one understands where you are coming from. It’s not that you want people to understand what you’re going through – because for them to truly understand, they would have to lose someone they love, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
Still, it can be hard to live in a world that feels different. I often find myself struggling to figure out where I fit and what the purpose of it all truly is. It can feel like standing in the middle of a tornado – the chaos of life and our society is spinning around me, but I’m just left alone trying to stay on my feet and make sense of it all.
For the past ten and a half years, I’ve been learning what it means to rebuild, to find my footing again, and to keep moving forward even when life doesn’t look like I thought it would. From the outside, I think I look like I have been doing pretty well with all of that. But the reality is, nothing makes sense to me anymore. I find myself shaking my head a lot, feeling confused, and not understanding the “why” of anything.
Before Pat’s death, life just moved. I went through my days like most people do — juggling work, family, the boys, daily routines, not really thinking about how fragile it all was. I planned for the future, assumed time was on our side, and took for granted that life would keep following the same rhythm. It felt safe, steady, and predictable. It just was. I was simply living without a lot of thought about it.
But after he died, everything shifted. The world didn’t look the same anymore, and neither did I. The things that once came naturally, getting up, going through the motions, planning for the future, suddenly felt impossible. Even the simple, everyday moments that used to mean nothing now carry a strange weight. Making dinner, running errands, sitting in silence – it all feels different now. But its more than that even. The way the world works and how people are is difficult to understand now.
People often talk about “getting back to normal,” but normal disappeared the day he did. There’s no going back to what life was before, because that life doesn’t exist anymore. I’ve tried to recreate it, to pretend that if I just stay busy enough, it might all start to make sense again. But no matter what I do, that old rhythm of life never returns. And the problem is that no rhythm of life has returned. There hasn’t been a reset or reboot on life. I mean life is going, things are moving forward, but I am left feeling, well I guess, alone. I’m not alone in reality. I have people around me, I have people supporting me, people loving me. It’s just this unexplainable feeling.
I guess what I’ve come to realize recently is that I can’t find “normal” anywhere, not in the places we used to go, not in routines that once felt so steady, not even in myself. I can’t just live life the way I used to because none of it feels right anymore. It’s like standing in the middle of a familiar room that suddenly feels foreign. Everything’s in the same place, but nothing feels the same. And maybe it is the same and it is me that has changed and that is what is leaving me feeling this way. Maybe I just don’t know how the “new” me fits in the world, or maybe the whole world has lost its mind.
There are days I feel like I’m losing my mind trying to make sense of it all, trying to understand why this happened, what it means, how to keep moving forward, how to find peace and happiness again and how to find my place in this world. And in those moments, the loneliness hits hard. It’s not just the absence of him—it’s the absence of the person I was when he was here. The absence of the life I had before. The absence of when the world made sense to me.
I don’t know if this even makes sense to anyone who hasn’t lived through it or if it really makes sense at all. What I do know is that being a widow is hard. It’s still hard, even after a decade.
Yes, I’m in a better place than I was ten years ago. I’ve grown, I’ve healed, I’ve learned how to live again in some ways. But somehow, life feels more complicated than ever. The world itself feels chaotic, and I’m just trying to stay afloat while carrying this different perspective that loss leaves behind.
Maybe there isn’t an answer. Perhaps it’s just about learning to live inside the questions, to sit with the confusion, the loneliness, and the change. I don’t have it all figured out, and maybe I never will. But I’m learning that healing isn’t about finding clarity; it’s about showing up for the life that’s still here. Some days that means just breathing through the ache, and other days it means taking a small step forward. I am just going to keep trying to make sense of this world that no longer makes sense and maybe, for now, that’s enough.
Widow with Wings 