Adults who have lost a spouse or SO, how do you cope?
Lost my wife (34) to cancer last month and I haven’t found any good resources to help me. How do you cope with their loss? Please remove if this isn’t allowed.
I lost my husband almost 8 years ago and my best advice is to find support. Don’t isolate yourself. For me, family and friends were there and available but I couldn’t seem to open up to them. I found a Google chat group of widow(er)s that worked for me. Any time, day or night, I could text that group of people who understood this utterly un-understandable grief. They helped me not feel alone as I found my path through it.
Message me and I’ll be happy to give you my contact info if you need someone to talk to.
Thank you for the advice. I’ve been on my own a lot, so when things get hard I tend to turtle in my shell until I can cope. My concern with grief groups is that I don’t think I’ll be able to cope with other people’s grief currently. I had considered looking for a caregiver support group when my wife was in treatment, but I just expected it would be other people like myself who had no concept of how to get by and deal with the difficulties that I was also going through.
You may try a few groups before you find the right place for you. Grief is hard to navigate and no one is going to have all the answers you’re seeking. But there are people who can stand with you through this.
Almost 20 years ago, I lost my fiancé to an undiagnosed heart condition and he passed away suddenly in our home. I was really young so I dealt with it rather poorly, with substance abuse and avoidance which was obviously not the right choice.
For me, once I allowed myself to feel my grief and just focused on the small snippets of happy I could find in the day, I began to breathe a bit more. It also really helped to talk about my fiancé and the good memories we had, big or small, with others who knew him. Every new day brought just a bit more air into my lungs and before I knew it, I was able to feel like I was living again. Albeit living with a heavy weight around your neck but still, living.
One day you’ll get there but focus on one step at a time, find the small joys where you can (and try not to feel guilty about finding said joy), and give yourself the same grace you’d give to a loved one who’s lost someone they love. Grief has no timetable and as someone said, it’s not linear, but you will make it through to the other side someday.
You die a little every night. After friends and family leave. In rhe dark when you hear their voice. In dreams where they reside you catch glimpses of them and when you awake you cry more for their absence. During the day amongst the crowds you catch a brief view of them among the crowd, a faint scent of their favorite perfume, a reminder that they once stood side by side to you and made a smcertain remark. Then you stop and you cry more.
I’m so sorry for your loss. My wishes are with you, I’m really really sorry. The grief of losing a life partner must be utterly devastating. I hope you find peace.
Every time I’m struggling to deal with greif, or someone in my life is, I always come back to this post from many years ago on reddit by a user called gsnow (it was in reply to a redditors friend dying, they were asking how they could cope with the pain of that loss):
Alright, here goes. I’m old. What that means is that I’ve survived (so far) and a lot of people I’ve known and loved did not. I’ve lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can’t imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here’s my two cents.
I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don’t want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don’t want it to “not matter”. I don’t want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can’t see.
As for grief, you’ll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s some physical thing. Maybe it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.
In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything…and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.
Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O’Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out.
Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you learn that you’ll survive them. And other waves will come. And you’ll survive them too. If you’re lucky, you’ll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.
(Back to being written by me) aside from making sure you’re using healthy methods to cope (DBT has some really helpful coping skills in its “distress tollerance” section that I’ve used more times than I can count. DBT is a particular school of psychotherapy, like CBT), find yourself a therapist so you have some support with the process. I’m sending love from my corner of the world
Thank you for sharing that. Feels pretty accurate to me. I agree with the OP about wanting to feel the impact of the waves. It should be hard, and it validates all my love for my wife.
I don’t have any direct experience, but I wanted to say I’m so sorry for your loss and however you decide to work through your grief (individual vs group counseling, books, etc) remember healing takes quite a bit of time and effort, and it’s not linear. You will make progress and then one day you may feel like it’s day one. That’s normal. You just have to keep at it. Best of luck.
The only recommendation I have is to spend as much time with them as you can. Anything that isn’t life-critical can wait. I’m sorry to hear about your partner.
You need support, whether that’s through a counselor, a support group, or other friends. I’m hesitant to say more than that, because this is one of the hardest things someone can go through. I wish you the best.
It’s definitely a short term coping mechanism, but it can help you stay steady until your appointment: try to just go through the motions. Just stick to routines, and try not to think about much of anything. Mundanity can be an effective tool in this situation, and once you meet with the grief counselor, you can work with them on how to deal with this moving forward.
I want to be very clear though: I am suggesting a short term survival mechanism until you can get professional care. This is not a healthy long-term solution and should not be considered as such.
I appreciate the suggestion. I’m not sure that I’m coping very well at the present anyway. I’ve been using audiobooks and podcasts to keep my mind from spiraling.
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