I'm Choosing to Live the Unlived Life

I was recently listening to Oprah's interview with Steven Pressfield about his book The War of Art and that prompted me to write an article for my business about his quote: "Put your ass where your heart wants to be."

In other words, show up.

Love it.

I was looking online for the exact quote to use for the article and another one caught my eye.

And that one made me stop.

In the widow community, one of the main questions we struggle with is how to move forward, move on, move somewhere (however you like to put it). Grief is a scary place and WE. WANT. OUT. I think that's the main reason we seek others to help us with our grief and find others who seem to have made it out the other side. We want proof that it's possible.

Whether you've lost a spouse or not, there's always a life unlived within us. There's always a path we didn't take, a choice that shaped who we are. Loss or not, that is something we all share.

I feel like the loss of my husband awakened things within me that I had no idea were there. Sure, in the beginning everything was too blurry to see the forest for the trees. But as things began to clear and my mind started working again, I realized there was more to me than this loss. Actually, there was more to me than just being his wife, which was something I was content to be before he died.

Even as I drove home from the hospital, suddenly involuntarily single, I KNEW my life wasn't going to center around this loss. Granted, it's taken me a lot longer than I had hoped to really get my life and be at peace with it (and that doesn't mean I don't have nights when I still cry myself to sleep). But the outcome has been more than I hoped for 12 years ago.

I'm living a fulfilling life that I might not have lived had things been different.

I'm not saying that widowhood is something I enjoy. Far from it. But it was so jarring and made EVERYTHING so completely different that I had not choice but to change.

Where I could take control was how I was going to change.

I'm living what could have been the unlived life. I'm AWAKE because of this tragedy. But that was something I chose to be and every day I think about who I could have been if I'd made a different choice.

I'm ready to live the unlived life I know is within me.