November 8, 2017
Vulnerable....
Is how I feel day in and day out now that I am a widow..
Being alone when you are young before you find your soul mate, is one thing. You are vibrantly unafraid of anything and throw all of your sensibility out the window. Then one day, you run into your soulmate and Voila! Your destiny is set. And if you are lucky enough bobbing and weaving through the rough patches you have a some-what normal marriage or union. Kids, dogs, sports you name it, you are in the middle of it all. Directing the traffic of your life~ you are on top of it! The best part of it is you have a partner to lean on and be the person who will listen and assure you when you are on the right track or reel you back in when you are way off course.
That was my life.
Then the other side of alone happened to me. I became a widow. That word makes me want to throw a chair through a window. That word tells the world you have been left alone. Your soul mate has left and you are alone in the world.
The vulnerability sets in, you are fighting to get out of the shadows. When you have work to be done, you have to ask your friends for help. Even though they say when you've had a loss, "call us, anytime" you feel like you are a burden. So, you try and hire people, and when they find out you are alone, you get the elevated widow pricing. Or in my case when I hired roofers, I was told not to ask questions and then there was the plumber that charged me $350 to fix a faucet. I have experienced it all from creative kinds of people who were "helping me" to various contractors, the vulnerability is all the same.
I am having to learn to have a new voice and sometimes I have to stretch a little outside of my comfort-zone. I was told early on after my loss, that allowing others to see your vulnerability is a strength. I am starting to flex the muscle a little bit more ~ and learning to find my own voice ~ even three years later.
