The Widowhood │When the After Isn’t Forever Either

I follow a lot of young widows on social media. In the early days, it was how I got through the hard stuff. I would watch them and think that God has a plan for me and the kids and that in the end, we were going to be happy again.

I did not have an easy marriage. In order to make my relationship and eventual marriage work, I had to move to Phil. I had to take on over an hour-long commute despite constantly applying for more local jobs that never happened. I had to live 6 minutes away from his abusive family. And then when our eldest was only a year old his health stuff began, and I went from wife and new mother to his constant care giver. I did everything. I was the provider, I was the caretaker of the house and when I was not working, I was with our kids. He appreciated none of it and as I look back now, I realize how much of a narcissist he truly was. Everything was ALWAYS about him unless it came to his friends that he would bend over backward for because he liked how it made him look and if I didn’t do the one thing he wanted at that moment, it was always flipped into “I wonder if you love me?” Really? And even after he died, I stayed the very true widow and made sure he was buried the way he would have wanted. I did the duty that I felt I owed from my wedding vows. Imagine the gut punch feeling I got when I later discovered his mistress and six months after he died sat on the phone with her finding out how this had all begun in what I would have described as the happy years of our marriage. In the end, he was just like his womanizing father– something he said he always never wanted to be like.

That is another story all together, but it made me begin to pray a lot. I prayed that God would send me a life partner, someone who loved me and my kids. Who wanted to be a husband, someone who was just not looking for a wife. Someone who would want to have a baby with me and give me the chance to really be a mom, not the exhausted one my kids have been used to. Someone who wanted me to be their wife, because I really want to get to be a wife since that too is something I feel like I was cheated out of the first time.

And I believed what other widows told me, that I would meet someone and it would happen quickly because God has a way of watching out for widows. So, I began online dating and after talking to several people, I thought I had met someone that seemed to want what I wanted: honesty and connection. I have never in my life been as vulnerable or as honest as I was from the moment I entered that relationship. If asked, I shared it no matter how hard it was. Only as time had gone on I felt as though I had opened up my entire life to him, but he never did the same to me. Sure, he did very loving things, spent most of his time with me and my kids, but never seemed to want to take it further, never wanted me in his life. After a year and some months, I finally ask about living together and it was just met with a total stone wall. At first it was avoiding me altogether and letting me sit in very hurt feelings for weeks and then it was coming over to talk, but I knew if he came with a truck he had already made his decision. He was already packing up what he had here, and we hadn’t even talked about us yet. And then suddenly I am told how he doesn’t want to be a stepdad and it’s not like my kids can even talk (they can, but one is overcoming CAS and their siblings are overcoming growing up with an older sibling with CAS as well as the trauma of having their dad die in front of them). And then suddenly I am standing in my driveway, alone and crying at 2 o’clock in the morning with my heart doubly broken as first, a woman and then as a mother.

I don’t know why God directed me to him in this life. I spent too much time grieving an unfaithful husband and then I opened up my whole self, my whole heart to someone that despite the ridiculous marriage I had…that I trusted and in turn, looked at me like what I had said I wanted was the craziest thing, even though we had talked about all of this on probably or second or third time together. So, I have spent a lot of this summer crying and also cleaning out my life and facing the things I couldn’t before like the dogs I had to handle. And also, the toxic things that lingered in my life that I should have addressed when I was married but always let it go. I can see that is where I was not a good wife nor girlfriend and I should have handled that differently than I had.

I am starting a new job in the fall and that has kept me anchored in that I will once again be lecturing college and teaching high school seniors. Between that and the kids, it has kept me going even on the days where I wish I could just crawl into bed and cry myself to sleep for days. And at night I still say a prayer to God that out there somewhere is a man who is going to love me and my kids and want to be a stepdad to my kids and want to be my husband. And who wants to complete my family…our family with me. Sometimes your faith and hope are all you have because sometimes a widow doesn’t get her happy ending, but rather another heart break that she has to recover from.

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The Widowhood │ Nighttime Reflections

I was 27 years old when I met my husband.

I was 37 years old when I was burying him.

Three kids, two houses, all of Europe, most of the East coast and a whirlwind of life later, I was alone again.

I had met him on a blind date. A coworker of mine had insisted that I meet him.

We went out to dinner, got coffee and grabbed a movie. And that was it, we were together from that point forward.

I had spent the six years previous to meeting him getting my career together and graduate school completed and dating emotionally unavailable men because I was really still in love with my ex-boyfriend. Though, at the time I would never have admitted that. And then I met my husband, and I thought THIS WAS WHY it all had to play out like it did and wasn’t I glad that it did, because it meant I had found my other half.

I had only ever wanted to get married once and I wanted it to be with the right person. He was the right person for me.

Only God had other plans and now I am sitting up late when I should be asleep, going over my life in my head and wondering what do I do with my life next?

The first six months were almost easy in that I knew it meant that I had to get the house and my life together to maintain my kids’ lives. And I did that. However, now I think about me. What does life have in store for me?

Had you asked me that last summer I would have bubbled over about my book deal and having my last baby.

I am turning 38 this summer and I put the book deal on hold to focus on kids and unless I meet someone with the next couple of years, my daughter will be my last baby. I am okay with that I guess…I just wish I got to have that moment most women have where they choose that they are done and are an active part of letting go of that part of their life. For me, it was chosen for me unless I meet someone who wants kids relatively soon. Just like it was chosen for me that my marriage has ended and I am a widow after only having been married for five almost six years.

Maybe this is me finding my anger in my grief?

I should just crawl back into bed and cry to the Kacey Musgraves version of I Can’t Help Falling in Love with You…if you need a good cry yourself, turn that puppy on. Gets my glasses foggy every time.

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The Hart Home│I Am a Widow Now

I am 37 years old.

And I am a widow.

If you had asked me a month ago what I thought this year would look like I would have told you about the several college classes I was teaching, my book deal, the trip to Disney World that my husband had pushed to book for Christmas, my new job and maybe even the idea of the fourth and final baby we were going to try to have.

Life is altogether different now. My husband is gone. My book deal is on hold. I am on leave from college teaching, and I have no idea when I will be taking the kids to Disney World again. I am looking forward to my new job. I also am both sad and angry that Phil and I will not have any more children together and I too am most likely done having kids as I do not see myself remarrying or being with someone again.

I had a really good marriage to someone who I truly loved and who truly loved me. I just wish we had more time together. This winter we would have been together for 10 years, and our sixth wedding anniversary would have been next month. And I am thankful that if we had to end this way that we at least got to have a family and find our house before because if I had been left totally alone, I don’t know how I would even be getting up every morning. It still freaks me out that I had to buy myself a grave to make sure that when it is my time, I can be buried next to him. How is this even my life?

One moment you think you have your life totally figured out and the next, everything changes in the blink of a Saturday morning. And then several days later you’re balling your eyes out writing and rewriting your husband’s obituary.

Dr. Katherine Kuzma-Beck Hart1 Comment

The Hart Home│Why I Didn’t Marry Until My 30’s

I think the simplest reason why I put off marriage and even getting engaged until I was almost 30 was that I wanted to keep my 20’s for myself.

At my core, I am very artistic and I am a dreamer. I have so many dreams of what I want to do and where I want to go. I saw my 20’s as a time for me to enact those dreams before I settled down. I have said before how I have always wanted to be a wife and a mother, but I always knew that there would be a time for that and that was sometime after I had done everything I had wanted to do in my 20’s. Now, that’s not the say I didn’t want love in my 20’s, I definitely wanted to have a boyfriend that was my person, but I was nowhere near ready or in the mindset to settle down.

I wanted to travel with or without a boyfriend. I wanted to finish my education and get into a doctoral program. I wanted to live on my own with a couple cats and enjoy living on my own without roommates or a live-in boyfriend. I also wanted to buy my first house by myself. In many ways, I wanted to live my life as my own person before I became someone’s wife and someone’s mom. And your 20’s really is the absolute best time to do that because that decade of your life is such a transition time from being a college kid to a working adult with real-world responsibilities. I also wanted to know that if I had to go through life on my own, that I could do it by myself and that I was a solid, financially secure person outside of any relationship or entanglement.

I also wanted to make sure that I was with the right person when my time did come to marry. Without getting too into it here, I grew up in a marriage that was between two people that were not meant for each other and it was hard growing up in that space. And then when it finally exploded, my brother and I took the brunt of the fallout. In many ways, it was more me than my brother because I was the older one. We both have very different memories from that time in our lives.

What I took from that time in my life is that when I did have children, I wanted to make sure that they had a secure and loving relationship modeled for them so that when it became their turn to get married and start their own families, that they would know what it was supposed to be and look like. I was thankful to have found that love in my mid-20’s and that my husband got to be a part of my travels and my first time being out fully on my own and then joined me when I bought a house and together, we started a life together because, at that point, we were both ready for the next step in our lives.

In keeping my 20’s for myself, I think it made me a better wife and it definitely made me a better mother. It also gave my husband and I time to do so much stuff together. We backpacked through Europe, went to Disney World twice, got our first home together, had a lot of date nights and hangouts– we just enjoyed being together for several years. And now we’re an old married couple with a baby who spends their days watching Simple Songs of YouTube and we wouldn’t change any of it because we love having Logan and are enjoying family life.

I think everyone should wait until their 30’s or even late 20’s before they get married. Your 20’s are the best decade you’re going to have to be young, stupid and on an endless search of finding yourself. You’ll experience love and heartbreak, new jobs and opportunities and hopefully, a lot of adventure. Your 20’s are your time and I think if more people kept it like that, more people wouldn’t be getting divorced within the first few years of marriage because they will know who they truly are and what works and doesn’t work for them. You will become the most honest you have ever been when it comes to relationships and what you’re looking for. And you will be an accomplished person in your own right, outside of your marriage and your family.

And if you’re lucky you’ll meet your person and you’ll get to go home from your crazy days of responsibilities and dance to acoustic songs in your kitchen while your baby is asleep in the other room. I am excited to see where my settled self goes in this latest decade of my life and what I am writing about my 30’s when I hit my 40’s…ahhh!

dancing
From our engagement photos at Asbury Park Convention Hall. November 2016.

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Seasons of Your Life

Women are different then men. We think differently, we respond to the world differently, we approach life differently and more even more noticeably, we age differently.

For men, I think life is a long continuous line of experiences and outcomes. They are born, they grow, they become old and they pass on. Women, of course, do the same, but it’s so much different for a woman.

Women age in seasons.

And each season is compartmentalized with old wants and desires, dreams and achievements that you know you will only have a chance to hit at certain points in your life. Women are much more aware of the limits of time and how time takes all. 

Looking back at my own life, which I have been doing a lot lately as I prepare to become a wife, I can categorize big chunks of time. There was of course my childhood, my adolescence, my first real boyfriend, college…

Seasons-of-life1

My first real love.

Not that I didn’t love my first boyfriend, but there the first time you fall in real love as an adult it is very different from the high school/college boyfriend that was probably most if not all of your firsts.

There’s the inevitable heart break from that first real love.

Then there’s your wine-fueled 20’s where you are working on your career, but not really settled and since you’re not over your first real love, you’re just dating idiot after idiot because the only time they can ever really hurt you is when they do something that reminds you of that great big let down that was your first real love.

Out of nowhere your life will begin to settle. You’ll finish graduate school maybe. You’ll find a stable job, you’ll eventually get to ditch the room mates and take on a cat or two. You’ll get so busy with your own life that the drama of your 20’s seems to die down and you’re no longer spending Thursdays at the bar with your girlfriends drinking too much wine and going to dark scary places of thoughts borrowed from TV shows.

You’re so busy in fact that you don’t even see the real, big love coming. You’re not really dating jerks anymore or any really because your life has become your job and the life you’re building for yourself. You kind of like it that way too, it’s easier to just worry about yourself and your fur-babies.

Then it happens, the blind date that you reluctantly agree to go on because your new work friend is just so excited to be introducing you to her friend. You had talked to him for a little bit on Facebook and it flowed well enough, he seemed to like your jokes and had some of his own. Before you know it though, there’s that instant spark and without either of you really planning it, you’re together from that moment forward.

He’s the only guy that will bring flowers to your mom when he meets her for the first time. And as he’s courting you he brings flowers to you whenever he’s thinking of you which is often. He holds doors for you and since it’s the winter when you meet he starts carrying a blanket around in his car because he knows how cold you get, you find it absolutely endearing when he tucks you into your seat each time even if it’s only a 5 minute car ride. It’s easy to love him and it’s even easier to be yourself, the good and the bad around him.

You blink again and suddenly you’re a tenure teacher and becoming a leader in your field. You buy a house and for the first and only time in your life, you agree to live with someone and it’s the best decision that you ever made because you slowly watched as your love for each other grew and changed until he asked you to marry him and you accept without hesitation.

You plan a beautiful wedding at the venue you fell in love with long before you ever met him. You enjoy your year long engagement but before you know it, you’ve blinked again and it’s fall, the season of your wedding.

Your shower comes and goes, you’ve cleaned your house out of most of the old stuff that came from apartments and past lives, making way for an entirely new life with your husband. Suddenly, you’re home from your best friend’s house where you held her baby all day and you’re cleaning out your guest room for wedding guests, eagerly selling and throwing out artifacts of former dreams and suddenly a new one really begins to take hold…

When your guest room starts to look empty and you label a few more pieces of apartment furniture for Facebook marketplace and begin to think about your best friend’s baby and how suddenly ready you are to turn your guest room into a baby’s room.

And just like that, you’re into your 30’s, ready to become a wife and mother, and for the first time in many years, that sounds just exactly like what you want to do even if it means you have to slow down in other parts of your life and not work 80 hour weeks.

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Away We Go: Where Life Puts You Down

There’s this Ben Okri quote in The Famished Road, a really great book that I read from the optional reading list when I took Art of West Africa as an undergraduate student at Rutgers. It say, “This is what you must be like. Grow wherever life puts you down.” As a clueless 20-something at the time, I appreciated the sentiment, but it has only been recently that I have really gotten it.

For most of my life, I had a plan for myself and though it changed and diverted in places I am reaching the end stages of that early adult life plan: become a teacher who writes books and travel, get married to someone you love with your whole heart, and finish your PhD. Of course, at the time I thought it would be a PhD in art history and that I would be an art history professor, but the way it has turned out has made me happier than I would have been had I followed the original path. Life had other plans and I grew into them because it’s where I was put down.

 

Again the tides are starting to change and with them, I am beginning to feel the feelings that signal change and uncertainty. In 2015, I took a huge leap of faith and commitment. I left my apartment in Bordentown and bought a house at the Jersey shore where I would move to with my boyfriend. I have never lived with a boyfriend and really never thought I would, but that’s the path life was taking me and instead of second guessing everything like I always do, I went with it and in doing so, I made one of the best decisions of my life: I began my own family with the man of my dreams and in 5 months, we’re going to be husband and wife.

Which has led us to a whole new set of adventures and life questions. After this year, we’ll be married and God willing, my PhD will be completed which means I will begin to look for administration positions as well as full-time university positions. We’ve begun to discuss many things, but the biggest one is: How committed are we to a life in New Jersey? And, where do we want to live?

We’ve outgrown our tiny seaside house with just us and the tiny zoo. Both of our dogs are full grown now and they would be so much happier with a lot of space to run around in. With the concern over honeymooning in Ireland, which, I think is also fed into by when we were in France/England in 2014 and were existing via Calais to Dover to Heathrow and they put the terror alert to red as we walked through lines of migrants, riot police and a crazy airport, it was all very unnerving. The world has only gotten crazier. With all the talk of what to do for a honeymoon and what our plan is for the next steps in our lives, I started to suggest maybe a road trip? What if we just drove around to all the states we always wanted to see and experienced them for a little bit? We could be like John Krasinki and Maya Rudolph in Away We Go, and maybe figure out the next place that we want to venture to or at least try to, before life puts us down again.

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Let’s Skip the Honeymoon

Is a honeymoon mandatory? I would think not, but as I began to plan my wedding, I realized how quickly people were willing to give you both solicited, but really mainly their unsolicited advice and opinions on what you should do on your day.

We had been dating for 2 1/2 years when Phil had asked me to marry him. We had talked about marriage often and about starting a family as well as all of the other things we wanted in life. We had done so probably since the third or fourth month of dating. My mom always told me that when you meet the right person, it was all going to happen quick and effortless. Looking back, I would have to say my mom was pretty right about that.

Within a few days we already knew what date we wanted to be married on and where. Planning started quickly and by spring of this year, our wedding was pretty much together. We just had to pay for everything. We wanted to honeymoon in Ireland.

2018IrelandOnlyTOC

I have always wanted to go there and Phil, being the gigantic fantasy nerd that he is was all for the castles and the history. It’s really the perfect spot. However 2017 is turning out to not be a very kind year politically and I really feel like the world is spiraling out of control. I am almost scared to bring kids into this world, because I do not think that it’s going to get better any time soon and for it to get better, it’s definitely going to get much worse.

Suffice it to say, we will not be going to Ireland on our honeymoon. After this latest attack in Manchester, I believe that Europe and us will be separated for some time which is a hard realization to reach since I love Europe and could spend so much time there happily.

We kicked around cruises, Hawaii and even weekend trips like Maine. However, as cool as Hawaii and Maine sounds, it wasn’t Ireland. And cruises? I never understood them. You spend days just hanging on this boat spending money and only a few days in the place that you’re sailing to. It’s been a big discussion.

Until today when Phil texted me and said, “Wanna just spend the days together after getting married and not do anything but relax and be married?”

I couldn’t type yes fast enough. This year has been one of big changes and working really hard to pay this wedding in full and in cash.

After this marathon we’ve been on since Christmas, there’s nothing I’d like more than to just be home, and be married with my husband and our tiny zoo.

Dr. Katherine Kuzma-Beck Hart2 Comments

Dallas & the Seasons of My Life

I’ve spent the last week decompressing from being in Dallas, Texas for much of last week. I was there for my final doctoral residency. Once I got out of the Dallas Fort Worth airport, I was immediately reminded of what I hated about Texas the most: the heat and humidity.

The last time I had been in Texas was when I went to La Porte, Texas to visit one of my little sisters from my sorority. I loved the openness and the relaxation that it brought. It was so different from NJ.

This time though, the residency was at the airport hotel and I didn’t get to see much of Dallas which was disappointing because I had never been and they have a pretty cool art scene. The point of this final residency was to, by Sunday night, have an approved DRP plan to submit for SMR and IRB approvals. Mine got approved the first day of “classes” which was Friday and it happened early in the morning. I then had to sit there for the next three days and work on my presentation and a paper for another class. I was so bored, but since these are considered to be “seat hours” I literally had to stay, in my seat….for hours.

Sitting around not doing a whole lot, to me, is more exhausting then even my most trying days as a teacher. By the end, I was extremely happy to go home to NJ to Phil and our tiny zoo. I am officially set to enter comps (doctoral comprehensive exam) in January. I probably could do it this next term, but with the wedding I just don’t think it would be a good idea. Better to let us settle into married life before I go crazy with another exam.

This spring was all about taking the School Leadership Series exam. ETS charges…are you ready for this? $425 PER TRY! How crazy is that??? I was so thankful when on the day, I got in the day before the 16th anniversary of losing my very cherished and much loved grandfather and was put on computer 16. I definitely felt like he was there with me that day and I finished with an hour to spare. It was a long 16 BUSINESS days of waiting, but when it came back that I passed I ran around our bedroom dancing.

In my personal diary, I talk a lot about seasons of my life. I firmly believe that women age in seasons, each one not like the one that came before it. A couple years ago, my more carefree season of my 20’s ended when I made a larger commit to my boyfriend at the time and we bought our first house. I remember how sad and excited I was to be leaving my life in Bordentown with my small apartment and my three cats. Even looking back professionally I was just a middle school teacher then with some publishing credits to my name.

Then I moved and I had finally made it to my life at the Jersey Shore, only 10 minutes outside of Point Pleasant where I had always dreamed of living. Then I started my PhD program and worked really hard to become a college professor. Then we got engaged and now, we’re going to be married in 5 months. I just don’t know where that time has gone, and lately, I have begun to have that feeling again…the one you get at the end of seasons as the new one starts intermingling. 2017/2018 is going to be a year of a lot of change: I will have tenure, I will be completing my doctorate and we might even be starting a family. All of those things, will push me into a new season of my life one where I will be settled, grounded and making huge leaps in my career.

And that’s just the stuff I know about, there’s still all the surprises that have yet to come and the very real idea that we could very well be leaving our little house at the shore to start a family life in my hometown. When I was just out of college and moved home to figure out my next move, my friends and I who were all in similar circumstance at the time, would joke…”All roads lead back to East Brunswick. Every last one, eventually we all come back.”

EBHS

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It’s Gonna Be May

Anyone else think the Justin Timberlake meme from his N’Sync days with “It’s Gonna Be May” sprawled across the bottom was hysterical? It’s probably the best one that I have seen in awhile.

And here it is, MAY! I don’t know where this year has gone, I feel like it has been on fast-forward ever since I came home from Chicago last summer. I blinked and we were engaged and since then, it’s just been fast-forwarding to November and our wedding. We have almost everything done, and now it’s just working to save and pay for everything. We’re having a relatively small wedding, under 100 people. I am floored at what it costs! I can’t imagine financing one of those HUGE weddings where you invite 500 of your closest friends and wear a Kleinfeld’s gown. Crazy town!!

What I am looking forward to most, is giving the final in my college class tonight because as of next week, this means that my 12 hour days are done for the year and summer will be here before I know it.

I registered for my LAST class for my doctorate, come September I will be considered a doctoral candidate and not a student anymore. I don’t know where that time has gone either. I leave for Dallas in a couple of weeks for my final residency. I have already gained topic approval, and now I am hoping to come home with a mentor-approved research plan, committee-approved research plan AND scientific merit approval which will set me up for IRB approval and thus, the real writing of my dissertation will begin.

Then this summer is clinicals and I am teaching one college class. I’m extremely excited for clinicals.

I also start my certification to become an arts integration specialist. I think this will really help me in being better prepared to set up my case study for my dissertation. Our first class begins in just a few weeks. I am hoping I can juggle it all.

Then, before I know it, it will be November and I’ll be married.

I also added Stephen King’s IT to my 100 Book Challenge.

So far, my 30’s are going a lot better than my 20’s!

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