I feel good!

"I knew that I would now"  Cue James Brown ...

I really do feel good. I feel it in how I'm carrying myself. I feel it with each step I take, with how confident I feel about meeting the obstacles that are thrown my way.  Oh I still have plenty of things to work on. My house is still a mess. And my pretty new car is still parked in the driveway because the garage is full of too much stuff. And I still need that "Be Nice to Dianne" note on my mirror.  BUT I do feel really good.

Especially when I think back to how I was feeling through most of January.  Ugh.  All of those tears. Nearly every. single. day.  Those unexpected feelings of wanting someone else in my life. I just didn't know what to do with them ... they didn't make sense. They weren't realistic. Those days sure took a huge toll on me. 

But I'm thinking now that I really needed to go through all of that. To spend time thinking about it. Feeling it.  All of it. The good AND the bad AND the super scary.  I didn't deal with a lot of my feelings during those early days of my grief. Oh, I started to ... but it was far easier to just push them aside and spend my time trying to help others. I got pretty good at deflecting the conversations from me to others ... but I don't recommend that at all. All of those feelings remain, just covered up a bit for the time being, ready to spring forward at a moment's notice.

And that's what they did. Forcing me to kind of wallow in all of it, bringing out some of the things I never dealt with. Some of the things I had covered up.  Like loneliness. And I think it was a good thing. Even though it didn't feel so good at the time.  Some hard realizations. And some unanswered questions that I'm choosing to just sit with.  Sometimes the answers just aren't ready to come.

 But through it all I really did know that I would feel good again one day. I just needed to give it some time. And this week proved just that.  It's been a really, really, really good week.

So many wonderful things happened - some surprises, some long awaited, some wonderful friendships, some lovely conversations - and they just built upon each other to fill my heart to overflowing.

I feel so very blessed to be where I am right now. Who I am right now. With the people who are in my life.  I care about them a lot ... perhaps too much.  But I don't know how to do it any other way.  Do I have too many widow friends?  Not a chance.