160. Three Little Victories

A widow shares a habit she started after her husband died, that’s helped her view her life in a new way. 

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

Nora: I’m Nora McInerny and it’s going to be okay.  This show is a group project where our team and you, our listeners, share a little thing, an okay thing, something that makes us feel happy ish, even when everything else feels kind of terrible.

Jane: Okay, here’s my it’s going to be okay story.  A few years ago, a very wise friend suggested to me I start a daily practice of writing down three victories I had that day and three more that I would like to have the next day. And it had to be three, no matter how tiny or insignificant.  This was during year four of losing my husband of almost 38 years.

He died suddenly and without warning in August of 2017 when I was 60 years old.  He was and still is my very best friend.  A beautiful dad to our two now grown sons, and in every way was my person.  I was completely unprepared for losing him, and though I was always able to function and soldier on, everyone always told me how strong I was and how great I looked.

Worse, I could never find an answer to that that felt honest. Thank you.  Four years later, I was still just so incredibly sad.  Even though 60 years old would not be considered young by anyone’s definition.  It’s pretty young to lose your spouse, and none of my friends, and not even most of my family had lost a spouse. 

I felt so alone, and did not find many people who could sit comfortably alongside of me in my sadness.  Most just wanted me to be happy again, and that was a state of being I was sure I’d never experience again.  Not only did I feel a sadness that seemed to have no end, but it was sure  I was pretty sure everyone else was over it already, and thought I should be too. 

So, I started this little practice of finding three things that I could think of as wins, tiny little victories. I made myself find three, and some days it was a challenge.  The things that I had to count as a victory were sometimes laughably small. Would we call finding that missing sock under my bed almost unrecognizable in Death Bunnies a victory? 

But I kept at it. And slowly, over the span of a few months, I began to see that those little winds had been there all along, but I wasn’t seeing them,  because I wasn’t able to grant any life to the small little pleasures and beauties.  And with a little more practice, I started being more intentional about creating and enjoying the little pieces of my day to day existence. 

I did a lot of other grief work and study, but this practice has stayed with me.  I’m also a singer songwriter, and I’ve written a fairly extensive collection of songs about losing my man and the solo afterlife with all the things.  My older son is a wonderful musician and is a producer and writer of film scores. 

He’s helping me record and produce an album of 14 of these songs, and we are well along in that process. It’s going to be an amazing tribute to my husband and to our love, which I know he would be incredibly thrilled with.  This process has also been very healing for me.  So, here I am.

 Okay, I got cut off, so here’s the rest of my voicemail.  So here I am, now six years out, and I’ve discovered that grief doesn’t go away. Not if the person you lost is from a new love to the depth of your soul.  I will never wake up in the morning to that first stretch and not have that pang of, oh, you are not here in our bed. 

We’ll never get used to making just one cup of morning coffee, or coming into the quiet stillness of an empty home at the end of the day. The clatter of life from him.  I will never stop missing him. And truth be told.  I’ve discovered that grief can live alongside of everything else in a life and can reside there quite comfortably.

I’ve  learned to breathe all of it in, the discomfort, the fear, the loneliness. I’ve found that I’m very strong and that all of this sadness does not weaken me. I  have a new capacity for enjoying life as well, and I’m finding pleasure in small things that I didn’t always notice before.  A smile from a stranger, a good hard laugh with a friend, a  nice glass of wine with a delicious meal, a quiet rainy evening with a good book. 

Carbon is on the second floor with a tree shading my large front windows. And a few mornings ago, I was up early, sipping hot coffee on my couch.  There was a commotion near the window as I watched a squirrel jump from the roof.  The tree limb, he started chattering, forming a little chorus with the early bird song. 

I was enjoying all of this when a helicopter, I live in an urban neighborhood of Los Angeles,  tooted on the Disney esque early morning serenity and I had to laugh.  That just how it always goes.  Beautiful right alongside of the hard stuff. What a perfect metaphor.  It felt really, really good that I was able to laugh at that. 

Nora: It’s Going to be OK is a production of Feelings Co. We are an independent podcast and feelings and co is an independent podcast production company. So you being here is Amazing a great way to support our show is to share it share it with whoever you think would like it Share it as much as you can rate and review it on Apple podcasts.

We’re a small show, we’re a small company, and we exist because of all of you. So thank you for being here. Our team is me, Marcel Malekebu, Megan Palmer, Claire McInerny, Amanda Romani, and Michelle Plantan. 

You can share your OK thing with us by emailing us, igtbo at feelingsand.  co.  I will read your OK thing for you, or you can record a voice memo and attach it to that email.

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